Adding new variants

Variants gives players the opportunity to design new variants themselves, play them (unrated), and submit for review by team CGA (custom game admins), for a chance to have one’s game listed.

How to create custom games:
Hit 'A' on your keyboard (or open any game), click the Edit Position icon at the bottom right.


Create a starting position
Choose board dimensions (anything from 2x2 to 14x14), and set up pieces (including 23 fairy pieces) for up to 4 players.
Bricks and transparent bricks are also available, as well as dead pieces (serve as removable obstacles), or bounty pieces (live pieces that belong to a dead player, the difference to dead pieces being that they give points when captured).
Additionally up to 2 players can be set to be zombies, eg a computer will move them, according to the zombie type. Zombies can be made immune, meaning their pieces cannot be captured (these are extremely powerful “moving walls”).


(The blue knight will make random moves and cannot be captured.)

The royal piece must not be a king, it can be set to any one piece for each player.

Add rules:
There are some two dozen rules available which can be combined.

Of course there are limits, if a variant requires additional rules (say something like ‘backwards pawns’), those would need to be coded by us first.

New rules are coded in a way that they can be used as building blocks. For example, Racing Kings can be ‘added’ to any game, so you could create 3player atomic racing kings or whatever.


Any player can create such a game and play it casual. Admins can add games to the list of variants, and listed games may be played rated.

For listed games, admins can set up a variety of further properties, such as name, url, icon, teaser text, how-to-play descriptions, sorting, categories, which rating to use, etc.

Team CGA has become increasingly strict and only accepts very well thought out and fun games. They also remove games again that don’t get much attention.

Join the Custom Variants Club to share your New Custom Variants (NCV) ideas:

Please read the requirements carefully before submitting your variant.

nice

how can i do that?

You will be able to create these yourselves when it's ready. Be patient. For now, you can suggest games, and we will consider adding them to the list of variants.
You can already do all this (and more) on https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess. (minus a few rules like fog of war or torpedo). See https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/creating-custom-positions for a quick guide. Note you can set up 2player games on 4pc. Here's an example 

Thank you so much

i have played that before but blavks are rocks

also in 4pc if you try to promote to a wall  or another pawn it doesn't work

yeah those would be super cool to add.

Can we suggest 3 player variants that require a 14 by 14 square board?

While you may of course suggest any game, for the moment the focus will be on 2 player games, until later when 4pc moves to variants. Something like Camel Forest would be preferable for variants at this time.

If we suggest variants, do you want us to include the starting position for the variant?

A picture of the position is enough.

May I ask, what do you think of Cricket? I'd like to host a good grasshopper game, thing is, I don't know if Cricket is a good game. is it? Feel free to share ideas, modifications, etc. I think what would be nice if we could introduce the fairy pieces slowly. Eg simple games with one or maybe to fairy pieces, which give newcomers an easy way to familiarize themselves. Later on we can add more sophisticated games.

Cricket allows capture on move 1.

When can we have the features?

If I add a picture for the starting position of a variant requiring a 14 by 14 square board how would you like for me to add a picture?  I can't find a way to get to a 14 by 14 board editor on this site.  Can I use an image I create using excel as a picture of an initial position with the pieces represented using their letter symbols?

Add Tails' Chaos from 4PC?

Variant idea: Automate chess piece placement rules, but where you play the position yourself, instead of the computer playing it for you. Would be even more fun if you could add fairy pieces, each for some price just like normal pieces (and maybe a limited amount of walls). So players could place their own army and then play with that. Also a four player version of "play-it-yourself-automate-chess-with-fairy-pieces" could be cool.

I agree, but lets wait for the 2 player variant maker first

@acgusta2 my dear friend, anything that shows the position and rules will do. Sorry I can't offer a 14x14 analysis board yet. You can draw it on paper and photograph, or use excel or whatever..

Setup will come later on, along with things that require the same things: piece banks and drop-funtionality: Crazyhouse, Seirawan Chess and Automate style setup games