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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 1 | 2 Gamerules 40pt Checkmate, 1-check, Capture the King, Takeover, Sideways, Stalemate Wins Promotion General on the 9th rank Note iT's FiNaLLy 1.20 iN MinEcRafT HarDCorE!

Ἔ 3|5 Solo Hnefatafl 2 n 1 ἐ # s Ī Ā =Off 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Although it may first look incredibly unbalanced, the game is pretty balanced by itself but remains massively imbalanced nevertheless. The main advantage of red over blue is the presence of royal piece, and the ability to win via king-of-the-hill. One minor strength of red is the ability to prolong the game by 100 moves. Red's strength is in the numbers, while blue's strength is in mobility. Wazir is thought to be worth 1 point, ferz is thought to be worth 2 points and the rook is thought to be worth 3 points. The only strategy for red is to build a bridge for its royal piece to the hill. Blue has an extra point as a starting advantage, so blue must prevent red from getting KOTH. Blue may employ a number of strategies to avoid it, two main strategies being: blitzkrieg and blockade. In blitzkrieg, blue aims to initiate an exchange of a rook for two pieces a lot, while in blockade blue just attempts to outlast red and deprive him of making progress. The fewer pieces are on the board, the more powerful the blue is. Whilst an exchange of rook for two wazirs will usually mean red wins with perfect play, exchange of a rook for two ferzes implies a win for blue with perfect play.

Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Game 4 Game 5 Game 6 Game 7 Game 8 Game 9 Game 10 Notes: Thanks to all who helped me with6 th6e game including @BeautifulGoose, @Anstolis, @Gaurasimha17 and @BunBun_Z. A common theme I have found is a fight for the center of the board, where the game usually ends in KotH. I hope everyone will be able to enjoy Diagonal Crossfire

Rules: takeover, 5 check, game of points, checkmate is 20 points and opposite checkmate is 3 times more points. Time: 6|2 Description: The lightning strike chess allows a complex battle while the king is stuck in a "Palace". It is easy to attack by taking the corners or penetrate the line of dead kings, which straightly leads to the enemy king. The grasshoppers are very useful when it enters the center, probable the first piece to attack the opposite side. Note that you MUST take care of your king after digging the tunnel, since there is no escape or protection for it. If your pieces completely takeover the corners, they'd be very useful

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 10 min Promotion King, General, Knight, Wildebeest on the 9th rank Note The original idea of this game was to implement a Crazyhouse variant of Courier Chess. However Courier Chess has the weaknesses of irregularities in the opening setup and Pawn promotion only to the second-least valuable piece. So now the pawns are all at the third rank there are a second Mann and Wildebeest in place of the Wazir and Alfils. The Ferz is also upgraded to a General.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Timecontrol 10 | 15 Gamerules RG Teams, Self Partner, Game of Points Promotion Queen, Bishop, Rook, Knight on the 11th rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 1 | 1 Gamerules Play for Mate, 1-9-check, Capture the King, Stalemate Wins Promotion Rook, Transparent Brick on the 12th rank Note In order to win, blue must stop the plane from taking off by giving at least one check to yellow, and obviously red must do everything to prevent this. In case yellow is checkmated or stalemated, blue wins the game by checkmating both red and green. Otherwise yellow checkmates green, which allows red to checkmate blue. At the same time, both blue and red can compete in stalemating themselves, as the stalemated player win. The main but small element of luck is defined as moves by yellow and green on the move 8. However, a wide variety of different strategies and lines not only makes the game interesting and fun, but also allows you to ignore the existence of the luck element, despite the fact it may be decisive.

I've long noted that many concepts that are left, especially for Wheel of Fortunes which require a more sidelong observation than the conventional variants, usually attained by a sudden glint of a tedious precogitation, thus highly increasing the number of unsuccessful tries at making those concepts. The key to all of these implementation failures, in a grand majority of cases, lies within the miscomprehension of actual steps to fix an issue and not the caused symptoms — an example of this would be a creator trying to add complexity via improving opening variety, yet that disregards strategy variety and as such exacerbates the complexity issue instead of improving it. Below you'll find a compilation of design patterns for variant creation that shall assist in fixing these subtle and elusive issues and not the semblance consequences of the issues themselves. It is just time to end this lingering preamble and go over the actual content provided below: TIMER. THE PROBLEM: You are actively trying to implement the forced transition between the game stages, i.e. the middlegame and the endgame, or to cut out a game stage that is hindering the gameplay (see Thermopylae, the endgame stage is largely cut out). Players however tend to find loopholes on how to force a particular stage, or try to keep more pieces to obtain a victory or attain secondary winning conditions, thus distracting you from the real concept you're trying to implement. THE SOLUTION: Instead of having the players manage their countdowns, delegate it to the player with minimal possible responsibilities, usually a zombie. The side with minimal possible responsibilities will be forced to slowly initiate the countdown, and you can easily provide more complex scenarios than just being dependent on moves. EXAMPLES: Thermopylae; Spy Party; Death Race; Runway; Gridlock; The Treasure Map; Among Us; Feed the Dog; Mathletics Cup; DIY Maze; Permafrost; T; BIND. THE PROBLEM: You have been attempting to focus the gameplay to revolve around a key strategic point the players are trying to take control of. As such, when one player's pieces are expulsed, it is expected they will, in most cases, lose the game. However you found a truly annoying issue: the players can just escape from the strategic point and control the point from afar, thus making the gameplay much staler. THE SOLUTION: Force the pieces to revolve around the strategic point, be it via immediate loss if a piece leaves, totally being unable to move or escape or just not having a legal move with the piece. Thus, if we remove all other pieces, the position takes the form of a trebuchet: a mutual zugzwang position, and as such compensates for the complexity, variety and strategy variety and balance as well. The player must break the bind in their favour, as such there is a choice of allowing the opponent to win (zugzwang), or winning yourself. EXAMPLES: Chamber of Executioners; Solar Eclipse; Zombie Protection (a very advanced form implemented based on move orders); Rush of Rooks; CHAIN OF MOVES. THE PROBLEM: You're trying to give a certain player an inherent advantage, for example, double moves or extra piece strength. However, by doing that you also gave strength to their opponents, as too much material means it is easier to lose it, while variant rules affect all players if their effect is long-term, or what you try to do is just impossible to do with the existing variant rules. THE SOLUTION: Break down the legal move chain to a player with minimal responsibilities, usually a zombie, that shall manage how exactly moves are made. For example: move one piece to stop a teammate from being mated, move any piece, then move a pawn to avoid yourself getting mated, end of the move chain. Here's an example: https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/26539291/0/3. EXAMPLES: 2 players, 5 squares (advanced form based on move orders); Escape of Wazirs (advanced version based on move orders); CONCAVE ARBORESCENCE: THE PROBLEM: You're trying to improve the variant complexity via variety, however, you've noticed that the more move variety you add, the less complexity there is, and as such attacks are almost fully nullified. As such, you're never able to achieve the desired level of complexity in your variant, moreover, you were unable to implement the desired ideas due to them failing via interferences or just direct refutations. THE SOLUTION: In order to implement contrived ideas that are impossible without sufficient complexity, the pattern suggests you stop focusing on the complexity and instead focus on how sharp the openings are. The pattern suggests you focus only on the following aspects:1. Sharpness of the openings should be very high: however the disadvantage should only appear during the middlegame.2. Variety of the openings should be very high: however the variety should only start becoming distinct during the middlegame.3. Attacks in the openings should be minimal: however blunders in the openings should become possible to exploit only in middlegames.Effectively, the pattern suggests you stop forcing the lines during the opening, and instead maximally restrict the attacking potential. Thus, the openings will only focus on giving you attacking potential but not the attacks themselves: this pattern effectively nullifies pre-middlegame attacks as a whole and suggests you replace attacks with attacking potential. EXAMPLES: Unison; Phalanx; Storming the Castle; Red Light; PROXY. THE PROBLEM: For quite some time, you've been playing around with a 4P FFA Atomic variant: the gameplay turned out very deep, however, you soon stumbled on an issue: the players in openings are way too commonly missing quick mates, and as such the mating players immediately obtain +20 for mate. That said, as soon as the checkmate occurs, there is nothing one can do to interfere, and the balance is absent: you're unable to achieve multi-stage attacks or to slow them down and as such, all the game is focused around these central pieces. THE SOLUTION: This pattern suggests that you split up the responsibilities: the royal is trapped and confined in an alcove, with the only key piece guarding all entrances to it being the presumable royal piece that was the royal before introducing the pattern. As such, you must first capture the proxy royal piece to be able to get to the real royal piece. EXAMPLES: Counterturn; Checkers 2.0; PIECE FACTORY. THE PROBLEM: You've been long attempting to make a support for setting up the armies during the game, but things like Setup Chess or immediate promotion result in the promotion occurring too quickly and setups being highly limited, as there's no variety of setups, the gameplay revolves too quickly and players are unable to construct a plan. THE SOLUTION: Instead of trying to delegate piece creation to zombies, not busy teammates or variant rules, implement it directly via an isolated, hard-to-access echelon of pawns that need to be pushed before the promotion is available: this will both increase the number of plausible setups and delay the setup stage until the middlegame. EXAMPLES: Thermopylae; Warp Speed; Sergeants Laboratory; War for Throne; The Racing Grace; Unique; LOCK. THE PROBLEM: You wanted to introduce pieces after certain gameplay stages pass by, to augment the gameplay with new innovative ideas and introduce numerous imbalances. However, when attempting to implement that via variant rules like Seirawan Setup you noticed that players may just sacrifice one of their pieces in order to stop you from achieving that and that there is a rush to quickly free those pieces and pile up even ignoring the bad position, just to preclude any attack on the royals. THE SOLUTION: Delegate the new piece introduction when a player (or a zombie) is eliminated, or the players take a special dedication to free the pieces from the zombie's hold, but not the player's hold. This is a much more secure way to mark a very important transition when players are ready to pass into a different game stage and greatly improves many position aspects. EXAMPLES: Chase the Royal; 100000; Inside the Horror Night; The Western War; Evacuation; The Treasure Map; Excalibur; INITIATIVE INTERFERENCE. THE PROBLEM: You've been designing a variant centred around a piece imbalance: the royals are offset from each other and whoever takes the initiative first can attack the royal endlessly, thus making it the battle for the initiative. However, a slightly more deep opening analysis revealed that the first side to move obtains the initiative via an unexpected line, thus forcing one side to always defend and the other one to always attack. THE SOLUTION: The pattern suggests you split up the pieces into pieces which are purely offensive or purely defensive. Then, introduce a rather quick but not easy promotion that is only achievable via trading pieces, thus forcing the defensive player to push the pawns. After pawns move, that player shall promote them and launch their attack, thus forcing the player to defend until another pawn goes for promotion and so on: the initiatives will always swap and interfere with each other. EXAMPLES: Inferno; The X of Tricks; Metro; LINE ITERATION. THE PROBLEM: After playing around with a sharp giveaway variant with its main idea being forced lines going more than 15 moves deep, you've found that players can interfere too much and the first side to move is always at an advantage: no matter what piece arrangements you try, there are always some forced lines. When you do find a fix for them, you notice that the variety has just diminished. THE SOLUTION: This pattern suggests you maximally restrict the legal moves first so that instead of 20 logical moves players get around 6 logical moves at max. Secondly, this pattern suggests you violate one of the accepting requirements and make the variant ultra-sharp in the middlegame but not the opening. Thus, the first moves players make settle the general ideas, and it is much less hard to screw up during the opening, this adds a lot of beginner-friendliness to compensate for the sharpness. Then the pattern suggests you make the lines so deep that up to the point of endgame players are forced to play along their logical plans, and the pattern suggests you fully isolate these unique lines. While this may seem counter-intuitive, this greatly improves all the position aspects if your variant centres around limited deep lines. EXAMPLES: Underground War; Giveaway UW; Castle on a Hill; Dead Man's Chest; Soldiers' Avenue; T; I hope you find this post insightful for creating these particularly complex variant concepts.

(Locked by CGA: Misinformation is not allowed)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 10 | 15 Gamerules Stalemate Loses Promotion General on the 12th rank Note Gyoku Shōgi - a (kind of) balance Crazyhouse.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 2 | 8 Gamerules Anonymous, King of the Hill, Takeover Promotion 1pt Queen, undefined, undefined, Wildebeest, Dragon Bishop, undefined on the 8th rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 1 | 3 Gamerules 1-5-check, Atomic, Capture the King, Takeover, DeadWall Promotion Chancellor, Archbishop, Wildebeest on the 6th rank Note A quasar is an intense ray that blows up immense power and is powered by a supermassive black hole and affects nearby planets and stars (like the Blue, Yellow, and Green armies). In this position, there are six “quasars:” Each of the four wazirs in the corners can threaten soldiers adjacent to some powerful pieces from the regular players, in which capturing them also explodes some of the stronger pieces by the Atomic rule if players do not sense the danger. The two kings make up one quasar but can release “energy” in multiple directions like the wildebeests in the back quasar. When they move, they can place generals that release more energy. Most of the pieces in the back quasar (especially the chancellor) are not active in the early parts of the game, but if players survive a long time there are higher chances these pieces will release big bursts of energy. The wildebeests are still problematic early on in the game with their long movements. These violent quasars can have devastating effects — another fact is that quasars can create the long-term effect of not enough gases needed for star formations. The Seirawan pieces from Blue, Yellow, and Green each cannot be produced unless there are enough pieces to operate the special move.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 2 | 8 Gamerules Anonymous, King of the Hill, Takeover Promotion 1pt Queen, undefined, undefined, undefined on the 8th rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 45 sec Gamerules Game of Points, 40pt Checkmate, 3-check Promotion Amazon on the 8th rank Note This is a remake of rubicon but with Amazon.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 10 min Gamerules Bare Piece, Stalemate Wins Promotion Ferz, Wazir on the 8th rank Note note : Playing a lot of Chaturanga led me to create a variation of it such that pawns could promote by crossing centre, and optionally promote to a minister (Wazir) as well. This led for much more exciting and open Chaturanga gameplay, and is quite enjoyable to play. Upon discovery of the Dragon-Bishop piece, I decided to try utilizing them into the game and wound up with the current version of Dragonanga.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 30s | 2 Gamerules Play for Mate, Stalemate Loses Promotion Off Note notes: this game is quite unlike any other game on chess.com to this date, your goal is to stalemate your opponent instead of checkmate. the game is very like a horde of games online, but i found it could be moved to chess.com. - on your turn you have two options : a. move your king b. break a tile on the map, do this by placing a brick from your supply strategy: you usually don't want to place bricks right away, because when both players are trapped, then whoever has more bricks left will win. there is no 50-move rule, because of the pawns on the side, the zombies will continuously break tiles, they go in between player turns. what i have found to be the most effective strategy is to wait until the board starts filling up, and try to capture your opponent in as few block places as possible. then try to escape your opponent and make them place more blocks to capture your than you took. also, the dead pieces are a reward for staying by the edge of the map. - tips - when your iceberg is shrinking (your king is running out of legal moves) try to head over to some dead pieces, they will allow you one more turn as your opponent cant place on them - learning about king opposition is important, you can block your opponent with your king, but watch that you don't get trapped - sometimes when your opponent is trying to trap you, and you have an extra tempo (you just moved into an open area) you can turn around and go on the offensive, by placing a block by your opponent. then if your opponent moves, you can keep placing by them until they are trapped. - if you can, try to trap your opponent before you are trapped, this is because if you are trapped, you can ONLY place blocks, you can not chose to skip a tempo by moving. that said, you sometimes want to try to corral your opponent into an area, then hope that the randos start filling it up. all in all, i am not sure that i have the position the very best it can be, but it is very unique, and so there is an open market. Ps - before people ask, yes i have already tested with royal wasirs, they get trapped right away, i am very sure the king is the best unit, although a queen might be more strategic, as you have to be concerned with long files and rows, but with queens both players can get to the center faster, the they just sit around and wait for the board to fill up.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 3 | 2 Gamerules Fog of War Promotion Queen, Bishop, Rook, Knight on the 8th rank Note Fog of War meets the Placement chess

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Timecontrol 45 sec Gamerules 3-check, Fatal Capture, King of the Hill, Capture the King Promotion Wildebeest on the 6th rank Note it is actually copper or diamond. i cant tell.