Vote for March's Golden Variants (2025)!

Post for the previous month's vote:
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/vote-for-februarys-golden-variants-2025

Not sure on what some of the terms in this post mean? Have any other questions? See any typos? Feel free to ask and comment below!

(Scroll down to the start of the bold text if you want to know how to vote without reading my entire post 😀)

Hello Custom Variants community!

You might be wondering why this post is coming out so late, or what's going on with Platinum Variant, but fear not, since that's exactly what this post is about! The wait is finally over for the "Q1" vote as we await which variant will join Minihouse, Ambush, and Saturn's Rings as one of the most coveted community-made variants on the Variants server (psssst, prizes are available, you don't have to click off this post yet).

Before getting into that though, here's the monthly variant review stats/fun facts panel, with all the numerical data you could've ever hoped for from a chess custom variants club:

• There are currently 46 posts Under Review (UR)
• 21 (45.65%) of those variants are NCVs and 25 (54.35%) are WoFs
• 19 of the currently UR posts were posted since last calendar week
• The CGAs and NCV Testers finished reviewing 30 variants since last calendar week
• The oldest (consecutively open) post was made on November 7, 2024: https://variants.world/posts/805
• The otherwise oldest post which was recently reopened after being bugged was made on September 22, 2024: https://variants.world/posts/771 
• 1 post was recently given a Pending Reply (PR): https://variants.world/posts/1137
• Minihouse is now averaging over 1000 games daily!!

Thank you to everyone for bearing with us and being patient even when things have seemingly gotten slower recently (see @JkCheeseChess' message in the VVF here)! If you ever have any questions on the review process, please don't hesitate to reach out to a CGA.

Now that that's out of the way, let's start with the changes being made to Golden Variant's format for this month!

See the full 2025 schedule as it is updated here:

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/2025-golden-variant-schedule

This month's format:

• 4 arenas, starting in March at 4 PM PST on Fridays (12 AM UTC on Saturdays), including:
  • "Golden WoF" arenas, which are 168 hours long each and replace the typical WoF rotation for the duration of this month. This was a popular idea from the 2024 feedback form!
  • The Platinum Variant arena, which is 168 hours long

What you're voting for:

• Weeks 1-3 (March 7-31) will be predetermined for this month's vote only by CGAs; Golden WoFs will reappear for future "interim" weeks leading up to a Platinum Variant and will be voted on by the community based on categories (e.g., best Pocket Chess variant, best Spell Chess variant, etc.)
• Week 4 (March 28) will be the Q1 edition of the Platinum Variant arena, which will be held on the last week of the month. The winning variant will also be pinned to the top of the "Extra" list for an amount of time to be determined!

Selected WoFs:

• Week 1: Red Sentinels by @ChessMasterGS
• Week 2: Barricade by @imchesspro0930
• Week 3: Cloister by @wolyn

What is Platinum Variant?

• Platinum Variant was introduced this year as part of the revival of the Golden Variant cycle.
• Platinum Variant votes are special votes held once every 3 months (quarter, hence "Q1")
• Candidates are the five Golden Variants with the most arena activity from a given quarter
• Winners of the Platinum Variant vote are considered the fastest rising variants and are projected become even more popular in the future
• Previous winners include:
  • Minihouse (by @MrKheese)
  • Ambush (by @coolthing)
  • Saturn's Rings (by @asthebird)

What are the candidates for this month?

This quarter, the candidates are (in no particular order):

1. Villagers Chess (by @Baqueano)
2. Explosive Magic (by @BN1208)
3. The Lake (by @2bHNST)
4. Cross Derby (by @xXMagolorXx)
5. Phantom Rooks (by @CooolChicken)

The voting process:

• 1 StrawPoll for the Q1 Platinum Variant
• 5 variant candidates, as listed above
• Ranked-choice voting (i.e., you rank all of the variants instead of solely voting for your top choice)
• The poll will have 1 winner, which will be determined by the number of points (as defined by StrawPoll's ranked-choice voting system) each variant has at the end of the voting period
• The poll will close on March 25 at 4 PM PST (March 26 at 12 AM UTC)

StrawPoll Link:

https://strawpoll.com/61gD92oXaZw

Happy voting and may the best variant win!

P.S.: I forgot to mention this in the main post, but the Platinum Variant event will have PRIZES!!!

1st Place (1 month of diamond membership): @wolyn

2nd Place (1 month of platinum membership): @hutianmin1

3rd Place (1 month of gold membership): @Trinhnguyenbinh15

(To prevent abuse, players are only eligible for a prize if their account was made prior to March 26; background checks may be run)

what does a background check mean here?

mine is petcv ppl, what's yours

checking the validity of your account

the variants shall speak for themselves :D

=(

minihouse is the best variant to exist, you can never prove me wrong

So instead of golden variant and normal WoF arenas, there's just 3 week-long arenas?

so somehow, phantom rooks, cross derby, and villagers are tied for first. vc is popular, but who likes cross derby? explosive magic is much better than cross derby...

Cross Derby essentially attracts everyone who likes Knights (which is a lot of people)

I feel a bit suspicious that someone voted like 10 times on an alt. Explosive magic came up from the bottom, cross derby is still popular for no reason, and vc fell to like fourth. and why does nobody like the lake?
For multi-voting, someone can vote, clear cookies, then vote again, and the site doesnt remember if they have voted. There's also incognito windows, and some people have multiple browsers.
In the future, is it possible to use variants.world for voting, since it can track chess.com accounts. To vote multiple times, someone would need to use an alt, and CGAs or some other people can ban alts or suspicious accounts (like chye's 20 alts) and those votes would be nullified.

Also only players who have played at least one game of each variant should be allowed to vote

dude then i can't vote (if you exclude testing games of Phantom Rooks played with NoWellOkay)

It doesn't make sense to me to vote and then not participate in the arena

That might be a bit too much...

When is the voting

Golden WoF was my idea

The results are in!

1. Explosive Magic - Winner! (1,568 pts)
2. Cross Derby (1,430 pts)
3. Phantom Rooks (1,417 pts)
4. The Lake (1,401 pts)
5. Villagers Chess (1,384 pts)

Thank you to everyone who voted this month! The arena will be scheduled shortly to start on March 28, and of course will have the membership prizes as mentioned above. We'll be back at it shortly to vote for April's variants.

rigged