In light of a recent issue I've seen come up, I wanted to make an announcement to clear things up. Please read to the end if you are a variant creator!
Ever since @BFDIChess adapted a historical variant called Clobber onto Variants (see: https://variants.world/posts/10219 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clobber), there have been quite a few posts with the same theme of "Make strategic captures on a rectangular board with Giveaway" or "Fight for space on the board by making strategic captures while keeping in mind that there's Fatal Capture", etc., etc.
Alongside Clobber, we also received another submission called WoF | Letisus (see: https://variants.world/posts/10218)which we declined since the concept was so similar that it wouldn't make sense having both accepted.
Fast forward to 2 months ago, @wolyn created a variant called WoF | Cloister (see: https://variants.world/posts/38), which was also created around the same time as WoF | Stone Knights by @larrysupercpu (see: https://variants.world/posts/44). Although there are similarities to Clobber, these variants are unique by using gamerules such as Any Capture, Fatal Capture, Crazyhouse, and Stalemate Win/Loss that were not present in Clobber and made the strategies vastly different when carefully looked at. We eventually accepted Cloister and declined Stone Knights.
When a concept gets used a lot (as another example, Dead Sea variants, see here for example: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-king-eat), the standards obviously increase for it, or rather, innovation needs to happen.
Obviously calling particular people out for this is pointless, because this happens a ton in Custom Variants and addressing it is no big deal
In light of a recent issue I've seen come up, I wanted to make an announcement to clear things up. Please read to the end if you are a variant creator!
Ever since @BFDIChess adapted a historical variant called Clobber onto Variants (see: https://variants.world/posts/10219 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clobber), there have been quite a few posts with the same theme of "Make strategic captures on a rectangular board with Giveaway" or "Fight for space on the board by making strategic captures while keeping in mind that there's Fatal Capture", etc., etc.
Alongside Clobber, we also received another submission called WoF | Letisus (see: https://variants.world/posts/10218)which we declined since the concept was so similar that it wouldn't make sense having both accepted.
Fast forward to 2 months ago, @wolyn created a variant called WoF | Cloister (see: https://variants.world/posts/38), which was also created around the same time as WoF | Stone Knights by @larrysupercpu (see: https://variants.world/posts/44). Although there are similarities to Clobber, these variants are unique by using gamerules such as Any Capture, Fatal Capture, Crazyhouse, and Stalemate Win/Loss that were not present in Clobber and made the strategies vastly different when carefully looked at. We eventually accepted Cloister and declined Stone Knights.
In the last month, we have received 2 submissions similar to Clobber and Cloister (see: https://variants.world/posts/115 and https://variants.world/posts/153). Both of which were declined.
When a concept gets used a lot (as another example, Dead Sea variants, see here for example: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-king-eat), the standards obviously increase for it, or rather, innovation needs to happen.
Obviously calling particular people out for this is pointless, because this happens a ton in Custom Variants and addressing it is no big deal
Happy variant making!