New Position Workshop / Testing Thread

Not necessarily. But Fatal Giveaway is purely to do with gamerules and has nothing to do with position, and we used to accept those variants. If you made a variant using the standard board called “Atomic Duck Chess”, it would obviously not be accepted today.

That being said, you can’t make your standards too low. Comparing an NCV to something like Fatal Giveaway isn’t a good mindset.

Btw, older replies seeking feedback on a position often get covered up by new ones without anyone replying and the older replies are ignored. I wondered if we should fix that problem, because I still have a pending question from Post #661.

Do you know that the most popular NCVs hasn't fairy pieces?

War For Trone hasn't fairy pieces, Gustav's Box hasn't fairy pieces, King Safety hasn't fairy pieces, Behind the Scenes hasn't fairy pieces...

Yep, that's mostly due to there actually not being any fairy pieces as far as I know when those variants were released; but it teaches us a valuable lesson on how even though what we have today is far more varied than before, we can still make really great variants with common pieces.

And I am getting criticism for having a limited horizon, which I actually don’t, for the fairy pieces I use in my designs.

Technically, the commoner/spare king in WFT is a fairy piece not seen in regular chess, but yes, I did think about all the non-fairy-piece variants at the same time. I meant to say that my statement from earlier is only mostly true.

Hi, You have designed some interesting positions already! But there have been a lot of submissions that don't seem to have a very deliberate setup. Why an extra chancellor and hawk for example? Why not just list many very similar setups to the NCV library? They are fun and interesting casual games, but are problematic in terms of variety and it's hard to discern their particular merit. Remember that many NCVs already have a very sparse player base, so more is not necessarily better.

The name of that NCV says why.

I have a new WoF custom variant!
Time control: 0,5 | 2D

Gamerule: Play for mate

A couple of things:

1. What's its name?

2. It may encourage teaming.

1. Killer knight

2. In such a short of time I think it can be ffa, but I prefer team

Maybe you should try to think of a different name? Not everything has to be named after a piece in the game. If you want Teams you need RG vs BY.

WoF: Ambushed

Gamerules: RB teams, 50 & 30+ KOTH (You can see where)

The goal of RB is to bring red's royal general to the hill within 50 turns. An alternative would be to checkmate green with the alibaba(although this is near impossible). Yellow must break past blue's defenses on one of two flanks. Blue may need to bring some pieces from the bottom flank to stop yellow from controlling the hill, which may give yellow a chance to break out from the bottom flank, What are your thoughts on improving the position?

Edit the 'lives:' part of the FEN4 that appears in the "Edit Position" tab (the order goes lives for Red, lives for Blue, lives for Yellow, lives for Green):

Thanks!

This position feels lopsided, have you proven GY can practicably win any other way keeping red's royal general from getting to the hill for 50 turns?

I may lower red's N-check to give GY a better chance

Another solution may be to get rid of a few blue pieces

@TheKraken831 Looks like it has a setup with some similarity to Thermopylae, but here red runs the gauntlet to KOTH. Giving red the royal piece significantly weakens blue, because if red gets checked blue cannot interpose, which I think is interesting. Some questions: Would reducing the board size as well as the N-check amount create a more succinct game? Would making the king a slower or less maneuverable piece add to the excitement of running the gauntlet? if the king was a bishop you could consider blocking it's line of sight with clunky allied or neutral pieces. Does the arrangement of pieces support a variety of opening strategies or are they arranged without specific intent? You may end up with a dominant strategy of trade-trade-trade until the position is pared down to something more manageable, which may contradict the design decision of filling the board with so many pieces. Good luck

https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/52847045/118/1

https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/52847287/85/3

You know what variant this is based on

What do you think?