This looks pretty cool 
Setup chess
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This does seem like a cool idea.
I had a similar concept going, where I made a setup variant where both players already have pawns.
I definitely feel like that helps a lot. But despite the pawns, I do agree that tons of bishops is very OP, and it makes it such that either you always play with mostly bishops (and it gets boring), or you play with other pieces and don’t stand a chance. Now, my variant is also fog of war, and I haven’t played much normal setup chess, but I think the basic concept is the same. I do like this idea.
Another thought I just had. What if each player is limited to 8 pieces or 31 points, whichever comes first? (Pawns would already be on the board.) It could even be upped to 10 pieces if people really wanted. But basically, it would prevent people from really overwhelming the board with lower ranking pieces, but it also wouldn’t make it so that one player could take both the queens or all four rooks or anything like that.
Thanks for positive feedback. 👍
Building on your idea of modifying Setup Chess could be to picking pieces from a fixed inventory of pieces (i.e. a fixed maximum number of pieces of each type). As an example, once the N-th bishop has been picked, it's no longer available and you would have to select another piece from the inventory. Note that one player could get e.g. all queens from the inventory, thus the other player cannot get any.
Otherwise leave the rules as today.
Staleno wrote:
Note that one player could get e.g. all queens from the inventory, thus the other player cannot get any.
This is the one aspect that I’m not sure about. I’m wondering if it would be better to just limit how many of each piece people can choose. You can have no more than 2 queens, 4 bishops or knights, 3 rooks, for example. I don’t think that your opponent’s choices should limit your own.
This is still a good idea though.
Oct 27, 2022
0
#7
Staleno wrote:
I was so happy to see the announcement of Setup Chess, as I have contemplated such variants myself. After a couple games, I quickly realized that the variant is broken. Large groups of bishops give a lot of "bang for the buck" and are simply too powerful. So there's not much point in selecting other pieces, so it's rather monotonous. Perhaps there could be some kind of adjustment to avoid this. E.g.:
1) Market prices: Piece "prices" are not fixed, but depend on how often a piece is selected (e.g. queens at 8.4 and bishops at 3.2)
2) Overloading penalty: Pieces get more expensive if you select more than 2 of the same kind (e.g. first 2 bishops cost 3, the 3rd bishop costs 4)
However, I feel such adaptions make the game a bit too convoluted.
But I think some kind of setup chess is the best way to play chess, as there's no opening theory and you can start planning and outsmarting your opponent already before the moves start. This works very well in a game like Arimaa. Here's how I would do it if I could make my own variant:
1) The 16 pawns are placed on their regular positions on 2nd and 7th row.
2) Black player draws a random piece from the 16 other pieces and places it on the board, in any position behind the pawns of its own color.
3) White player draws a random piece from the remaining 15 and places is.
4) Proceed until all pieces have been placed
5) White makes first move and play follows DFRC rules (Double Fischer Random Chess)
Any thoughts?
The problem with castling in displacement chess games is you rarely can do it without spoiling the ideal castle structure, so it is better not to recognize such a maneuver in one as in my idea at https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2912743/capa-dragon-sicilian-chess.
I've been thinking about this sort of variant - and I wonder if it would not behoove us to keep the variant playable with a standard chess set. Other than making this more easily playable IRL, it would also solve the problem of overloading on certain pieces by limiting the amount of bishops to 2 per player.
However, it does seem like we are approaching another notable chess variant: Bronstein Chess (aka Pre-Chess, Placement Chess). Maybe that is the best option...however I wonder if there could be any additional freedom given to the placement of the pieces (in Bronstein you simply are deciding the order of the back rank).
I've been thinking that too. There's another -- more middle-ground -- option that I've been thinking of, which is that each person has the option from a double set of pieces (i.e. two queens, four rooks, knights, and bishops), and there is already a row of 8 pawns on the board. Not including the 8 pawns already set up, you'd have 31 points plus a king at your disposal. This would allow for more variation (like original setup chess), but would also make it so that people don't just constantly make their board be all bishops. They could have 4, but that's it.
That's just my idea. I don't know if it's good or not 😆
I was so happy to see the announcement of Setup Chess, as I have contemplated such variants myself. After a couple games, I quickly realized that the variant is broken. Large groups of bishops give a lot of "bang for the buck" and are simply too powerful. So there's not much point in selecting other pieces, so it's rather monotonous. Perhaps there could be some kind of adjustment to avoid this. E.g.:
1) Market prices: Piece "prices" are not fixed, but depend on how often a piece is selected (e.g. queens at 8.4 and bishops at 3.2)
2) Overloading penalty: Pieces get more expensive if you select more than 2 of the same kind (e.g. first 2 bishops cost 3, the 3rd bishop costs 4)
However, I feel such adaptions make the game a bit too convoluted.
But I think some kind of setup chess is the best way to play chess, as there's no opening theory and you can start planning and outsmarting your opponent already before the moves start. This works very well in a game like Arimaa. Here's how I would do it if I could make my own variant:
1) The 16 pawns are placed on their regular positions on 2nd and 7th row.
2) Black player draws a random piece from the 16 other pieces and places it on the board, in any position behind the pawns of its own color.
3) White player draws a random piece from the remaining 15 and places is.
4) Proceed until all pieces have been placed
5) White makes first move and play follows DFRC rules (Double Fischer Random Chess)
Any thoughts?