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https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=8749706 Months ago, @Johnny_Fang submitted WoF - The Ferz Challenge, with a unique and original idea: one player protects a zombie, while the other player tries to kill it. Since the players have two completely different (and conflicting) agendas, this is an FFC (Fundamentally Flawed Concept - check out bsrti's classification of concepts thread), and therefore very difficult to make well. The Ferz Challenge was declined, and never seen again. However, this is a really cool concept, so I will post it here for any brave enough to take on this challenge. Of course, we need permission from the creator of the concept to use it, but that's actually me. I played around with the concept here https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=7989763, quite a while before The Ferz Challenge was submitted. So now anyone can use this concept lol Note that my old position has another FFC: the red checker provides a sort of turn timer (a bit like the pawns in WoF - Death Race which was created and accepted a while later). Both of these concepts are pretty difficult to realize successfully. Good luck to anyone who wants to try this! I guess it's kind of a race to see who can get a position accepted first. Feel free to post ideas about how to realize these concepts.

I will be posting this position in the 4pc position's club later, but it needs a name.

So i created a position that uses deadwall to make dead zombie pieces block the only way for royal to KotH, letting them opponent win. I dont know what to do with the position, nor if it should be NCP or WoF. I just think it would be too zzzzz for wof. I think NCP, it is not luck based even. but mainly i want feedback on the walls and zombie setup. the red and yellow pieces will be probably changed.

Gamerules: Alternative Teams (RGvBY), 2-Check, Capture the King, Ghostboard, Promotion on the 5th rank to Knightrider of Alibaba-rider. Timecontrol: 1|7 in case of NCP, 1/2|5D in case of a WoF. Testing notes: Due to the overall lack of arrows and coordination, complex teaming attacks are very difficult to pull off, and there is a certain amount of luck coming from lack of coordination with teammate (two check enhances it). The game by itself is pretty sharp yet variable, and most games end within ten moves. It would overall fit very well as a WoF due to imbalanced gameplay and excitement, yet the problem with it being WoF is that users get constantly confused with ghostboard and teams used together. So, while it works as a WoF well, it may not be beginner-friendly enough to be one. About the name, I am open to suggestions, as this game has quite a good potential for names. Any suggestions must be based on the tests you made. Also, your feedback must be based on the games you played or must have a reasonable justification in case of a name suggestion.If you don't have any feedback or suggestions, or you have no basis to write it, please refrain from writing anything in this thread.Comments like "weird", "good", "bad", "why not ...", "ok" etc are not allowed. Every comment must have a respectful justification. Comments referring to anything else but the game itself are not allowed. Discussing how I changed the texture of walls is not worthy of a post. You should not be discussing strategies here in comments, and instead of commenting on suggestions and real thoughts on the position and how it can be improved.

NOTE: NOT CTK This is the setup in the center of the board. If red or yellow runs out of pieces before blue is stalemated or mated, they get stalemated themselves and win due to immune zombie gimmick (doesn't give points). However, after blue is stalemated, If a player is forced to move the royal, the other player will KOTH. So at first, you can play to lose all your pieces and win by stalemate, but after blue is gone, you must play to stalemate the opponent. Very difficult concept I came up with, but it would be extremely cool if you got it right. Good luck!

I've been meaning to post this concept for days... it keeps slipping from my mind for some reason (obviously because bsrti named the gamerule that must not be named). Anyway, here's a position: You may recognize it. This is WoF - Permafrost, which was created (by me) and accepted months ago. As you can see, the grasshoppers are unable to move, but they can be freed if the dead camels are captured. This creates a lot of potential for interesting "mini-quests", and I'm a bit surprised that this idea has not been used since this position.

This guide assumes you are already well acquainted with creating quality positions and you can correctly test position very deeply and make logical decisions about improving it. It is well known that everyone wants their position to be as balanced and fair as only possible, yet usually, this is not achieved. Firstly, let me define the goal that one should be following when reading the guide: In position, one should be able to successfully defend from 2v1 against two intermediate strength players (approximately 1800 each). In position, one should always be able to clinch for 2nd place or sometimes even 1st in case a 2100 rated player targets only you and no one else targets him. You should be able to get on top with second or first in case you are being blatantly 3v1ed by three 1600 players. In a game of three 2400 players, you should stand a nearly equal chance to win even if your opposite resigns on move 3. All of this subsumes your rating is 2400, and the rating of other players directly correlates to their playing strength in the variant, assuming no inflation. Variant should be enough well-made and unique so that CGAs will accept it. Achieving this is far not as simple as it looks like, yet let me make it clear what aspects add up to the position being notably closer to such a balance. Most importantly, the easiest and most commonly used way of creating such a position is by using custom royals. King as a royal just does not work as well with other pieces, so creating a balanced position with the king will be way harder. Royal should be easy to checkmate for a strong player, yet at the same time enough defendable against weaker players. The royal piece should be limited in movement: ferz, wazir, alfil, dabbaba, or pawns work already well for this. General is also a perfect choice if used correctly, it is a universal piece. In the case of a pawn, 8th to 10th rank promotion and KOTH also work very well, but if you use KOTH you should almost definitely use N-check in conjunction with it. Next, the number of pieces. There should be a lot of pieces, about as many pawns - this is a well-tested setup that allows you to opt for rational power concentration. Sergeants, berolinas, and stone generals are the best pawns you can think of usually. Also, use all the 14*14 board: do not turn it into 12*12 or 13*13, do not minify it. Walls like in the Battle of the Castles are OK. To arrange the pieces, you will need a concept. Here you are not limited by the concept itself, but power concentration should be adequate. Take a look at the Battle of Castles, Laboratory of Knights-Sergeants, and Unison to see what correlation of pawns and pieces should approximately be. When you are done with the overall placement of the wall structure, and overall piece type proportions, you should finally begin to fill out the pieces. You should take the following points into account: The position should be very complicated and very variable. Complicatedness can help to combat problems of balance by a whole lot, so opt for variants that are overall slightly less or more complex than standard. Limit 2v1 attacks that win material to only one line. Why only one line instead of zero, you may ask? Such a line should grant you positional advantage via losing some material so that you can knock out a weak player very easily. The game should be slow-paced: the more moves to prepare and the more quiet position is, the better. Players tend to learn positional and slow-paced games at a way noticeably slower than fast-paced games. Yet, your position must remain sharp. Point spread like OxN or N-point checkmate is an outstanding way to compensate for weak flanks/opposites, so point spread while not being a must is a very good idea usually. Now, pick a piece set that will correspond to all of the above. You will fail a lot with the piece set, usually due to variability or overall lack of strategy. Do not worry, this is normal if you aim for the inordinately balanced position, so 4-5 tries should do it (I found optimal piece set on the second try due to myself being lucky here, you will likely need more). Another thing that you should note in the final piece set proportions is that there should be three well-defined piece categories. Having a piece that cannot influence KOTH or threaten royal is a good idea. This piece should be strong by itself, yet have its notable weaknesses. When the preparation is done, the most important part begins testing. That's where you will have ↈ possible setups that all seem to work, so you will need to filter them out. Here is a good way that I observed from creations of laboratory and from my own experience: Three-move checkmates should be present but be incredibly restricted that any of three players no matter his color can easily stop them. This is a good way to strike down 3v1 potential. Subdivide positions into two flanks, either from start or allow players to opt for it via different promotion options (fast promotion). Two separate flanks and royal being a weak piece is a good way to let each player define what is the attacking flank and what is the defending flank (not like in Collateral Worlds, something like that will only break balance) Checks should not gain compensation, and the only checking pieces should be important in middlegame and opening. Laboratory of Knights-Sergeants and Unison perfectly demonstrate this aspect. Calculate 2v1 attacks up to depth 17(!) so that there will be no material gains without resulting in worse positional weaknesses. This will take a lot of time to get right, yet also this allows you to filter out wrong positions. Take a look at the archive of qilp while he created and tested T, a very good example for position creators on how to correctly build up a position. The next step is TEST, TEST, AND TEST. Yes, now when you are down to 3-5 position setups, test all of them and ask for opinions. They all will be likely very close in terms of balance, yet you want to land a perfect shot. Also, it is normal for a position to be pretty boring: beginner-friendliness and balance will compensate for it a lot. One interesting aspect is that balanced and complex positions tend to be more beginner-friendly, so you will carry out on two aspects instead of one. IMO, but trading balance and friendliness in an exchange for excitement is a very good choice. As an additional idea, test your position with diplomacy. If it is balanced in diplomacy enough to be accepted were it not for the prohibition of admins, then it is enough balanced to be played without diplomacy for sure, and you'll end up with an inordinately balanced position. Now about the opposite, ideally they should not be your friends. Instead, they should be the ones you try to weaken to gain an advantage, this brings a good amount of balance to the position. While all of this does not contribute to balance directly, these aspects influence balance in a different way and allow your position to be extremely balanced. Each of these aspects is compensation for an element of imbalance and luck present in each of the normal FFA positions (cough cough dead king labyrinth cough), and contributes to the overall balance. You may also like to make your position solo by default if you managed to succeed in creating a very balanced FFA position. It might happen one will follow all of these guidelines randomly, yet this happens extremely rarely and you should instead focus on the aspects themselves. And of course, in the process of this, make sure that the position is original and complicated enough, and not having issues so it will not be declined, but this applies to every position reviewed by CGAs. While creating a very balanced position is not that difficult, it does require a lot of power investment and a good amount of determination to correctly implement it. Even weak players may create such a position - you will need to ask for opinions a lot and test with strong players. Again, diplomacy in testing helps a lot with this: you see problems of 2v1 and 3v1 far away.