Wild Rose Chess

Hey guys!

Allow me to introduce you to a somewhat unusual and strange chess variant, the conceptual model of which is significantly different from all other known chess variants.
In the first three days since it was published on my blog here on chess.com, I received a lot of  positive feedback on this idea.
I hope you find this information useful and will not regret taking the time to read it.

Wild Rose - this piece combines the functions of the Queen and the King: it can move and capture like a Queen, it cannot be captured, but it can be declared check or checkmate like a regular King in chess.

Players' roses can declare mutual check and even checkmate to each other!

Avoiding check is not necessary, but it does affect on >>>

Win/Loss Conditions

After your move:

- By giving check to two of your opponent's Wild Roses at the same time, you win the game (checkmate)
- By putting your two Wild Roses under attack (in check), you win the game (blossom roses)
- Leaving your opponent without pieces (only with Wild Roses) - you win the game (fading roses)
- Leaving one of your Wild Roses under attack means you lose the game (rose cutting)

Winning Conditions always prevail over the only Losing Condition. Or in other words, the first one to fulfill one of the three winning conditions wins.

In addition to Wild Rose, in this version of fairy chess we have pawns and other pieces that have different properties from classical chess pieces.

Pawn is an ordinary pawn from standard chess that moves and captures according to FIDE rules.

Nightrider is a fairy chess piece by Thomas Dawson. It can make a move like a Knight, but then can continue to move in the same direction. Thus, it can make one or more successive Knight-leaps, all in the same direction: the spaces visited by all but the last jump must be empty.

Crusader is a combined Bishop and Dabbabarider (jumps two squares orthogonally, leaping over any intermediate piece with continuation of movement in a given direction).

Raven is a combined Rook and Nightrider. 

The initial arrangement of the pieces is shown in the picture below:

Raven is in the rook position, Nightrider is in the knight position, Crusader is in the bishop position, and Wild Rose is in the queen and king positions. Pawns, as in classical chess, are located along the second and seventh ranks.

Wild Rose Chess can be played using a regular set of chess pieces. In this case, the initial arrangement will look like this:

No castling. Yes en passant. 

Repeating a position is prohibited and is considered an illegal move.

Pawn Promotion is very different from the usual option accepted both in standard chess and in countless variants of chess and is called Growing Roses.

Growing Roses

A pawn that reaches the last rank is removed from the board, turning any opponent's piece on the board into a Wild Rose. Thus, the opponent has another Wild Rose.

The player who brings his pawn to the last rank himself decides which of the opponent’s pieces will become the Wild Rose and makes a move again!

In other words, a 'pawn promotion' looks like this (step by step):

- The player moves his pawn to the last rank.
- The pawn is removed from the board and no longer participates in the game.
- The player, at his discretion, replaces any opponent’s piece with a Wild Rose of the same color.
- The player makes another move with any of his pieces (if at the same time one more pawn can reach the last rank, then the whole procedure is repeated again).
- The move to 'promote' the pawn is over.
- Now it's the opponent's turn.

The examples of Win/Loss Conditions and Growing Roses for a more complete perception of the events and phenomena taking place on the chessboard could be found here 

Thank you.

Nice

Sounds really complex, in a good way. Would love too see this on actual variants, although I have a feeling I would be trash at it and it might sadly not gain much popularity. Awesome variant though, really creative and genuinely intriguing.

How does the unicorn move?

At first glance, it looks like the pawns cannot match he skill of the other pieces, and therefore will be powerless to do anything while the rest of the highly powerful pieces go attack each other. Besides that, I don't see many obvious problems, it would need testing, but overall I'd say it's a very cool idea.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

The unicorn image refers to Nightrider as this fairy chess piece is sometimes called a unicorn.

You're wrong about the pawns. It's just the opposite The opening stage is very different from standard chess, where we are taught to mobilize knights and bishops first.

Yes, that was my point. The powerful pieces behind the pawns can be mobilized right away, and then dominate the whole board. The pawns will be helpless.

basically coregal chess but with fairy pieces and 2 queens

i have a feeling itll be very hard to win in this variant

and i heard its not possible to have more than 1 royal

seems really cool

There are many reasons that it won't work as a chess.com variant.

no more harder than in standard chess and variants.

Here is one of the first test games played in Wild Rose Chess.

We will deal with standard chess pieces and notation.

Rook = Raven, Knight = Nightrider, Bishop = Crusader, Queens&Kings = Wild Roses

1. d2-d4 f7-f6 Black opens the path for Raven on h8 to prevent White Rose from b4 or a5. If White plays like this, he will immediately get checkmated.

2. Qd1-d3 d7-d5

3. e2-e4 

Now you can't play 3. ...d5xe4 because of 4. Qe1-e2# or 4. Qe1-d2# White wins by Blossom Roses.

3. ...Qe8-h5 Threats either 4. ...Qh5-d1# or Qh5-e2#

4. f2-f3 It is dangerous to attack Black's Wild Rose on h5 while Black can expose his second Rose on d8 under attack.

4. ...e7-e5

5. b2-b3 c7-c5

6. Bc1xc5 Bf8xc57. d4xc5

Black wins in two.

7. ...Qh5-g5

White resigned as there is no escape from the mating threats Qg5-d2# or Qg5-e3#. 8. Qd3-b5 will be followed by 8. ...Qd8-a5#

It’s obvious that basically it’s not coregal chess at all. Completely different conceptual model.

You've clearly put a lot of work in this, hope chess.com accepts it.

wait i thought the goal was to checkmate one of the queens. how are there mating threats, the other queen is guarding the d2 square

I'm confused. Does each side have 2 moves per turn, and if not, how are they to check both queens without a discovery? Also, wouldn't a single check be a mistake, as the other queen could simply move into check, winning the game?

yea, this variant is confusing, and i kinda feel like the fairy pieces don't rlly fit in with the 8x8 board, they just feel like add ons to make the variant unique without much thinking. i like the creativity tho

The fairy chess pieces were chosen in such a way that they could control most of the board from the starting position. But not only. The maximum possibility of delivering a simultaneous check to two Wild Roses was also taken into account.

1 move per turn, as usual.

Players' roses can declare mutual check and even checkmate to each other!

Avoiding check is not necessary, but it does affect on >>>

Win/Loss Conditions

After your move:

- By giving check to two of your opponent's Wild Roses at the same time, you win the game (checkmate)
- By putting your two Wild Roses under attack (in check), you win the game (blossom roses)
- Leaving your opponent without pieces (only with Wild Roses) - you win the game (fading roses)
- Leaving one of your Wild Roses under attack means you lose the game (rose cutting)

Good variant idea, but a bit too complex, mutual check is really confusing

I think this variant would be better without all the fairy pieces; the Wild Roses add enough complexity and those fairy pieces are hard to visualize.