Dark Forest chess

The Dark Forest consists of the most outer ranks and files of a 10x10 chessboard.

No piece, except for the Evil Wizard, can enter or leave the Dark Forest.
The Evil Wizard moves and captures like a Queen that is limited to 3 squares
The Evil Wizard captures a piece by occupying its square, and moving it to any random vacant square
- in the Dark Forest if the piece was on the active board (only allowed with opponent's pieces)

- on the active board if the piece was in the Dark Forest (only allowed with allied pieces)

Pieces in the Dark Forest can just dwell there until they are brought back. They cannot capture other pieces in the Dark Forest.
So for active gameplay they are of no use, that's why you would want to rescue your banished pieces.
It can make sense to move your piece through the Dark Forest, usually to get it on a square where your allied Evil Wizard can rescue it more easily.

There are two ways to win this game:
1. Mate the King
2. Banish the King to the Dark Forest, and then capture the enemy's Evil Wizard

Did you make this variant yourself? Also, can you move a piece in the Dark Forest to a square still inside the Dark Forest, or are they just stuck there?

This idea popped up in my head yesterday.

I see some room for refinement of a few details.

About your 2nd question , that is answered in the OP .

Why can't I just banish my own King to the Dark Forest, put my Evil Wizard into the Dark Forest, and then be invincible?

Good question, I would say like this:

Good remark. I just made a small change to the rules so that this will be not allowed.

So now, the Evil Wizard can only rescue allied pieces from Dark Forest to active area, or banish opponent's pieces from active area into the Dark Forest.

And then, when the Evil Wizard rescues an allied piece, he can put the allied piece just anywhere on the board. But that is something I intend to change.

This should not come with the advantage of putting an immediate threat, so i will refine the rules a bit for that later.

Also I will try to come up with a nice figure for the Evil Wizard.

I thought of something like this (made by ChatGPT):

I tried to make something for chessboards:

Edit: improved the icon for Evil Wizard - with help from ChatGPT

Maybe others would do a better job at this

I need to say that I really like this variant. I would definitely play it if I had the opportunity.

I can facilitate that, in this forum, I would post the boards and you would just type your move in forum posts here. I'd like to know if somebody else would like to be your opponent.

Or we play. It will take another day to organize my scripts such that I can create the boards more easily

Open seek.

Who is interested in playing this variant?

I could... But I know you told me that you'd rather have someone else play, so I'll give other people a turn.

Our game has been long ago, so you're welcome

Woooo!