Bulldog chess with Witch (SuperSam1 - vickalan)

This thread is for a game of "Bulldog Chess with Witch" between SuperSam1 and vickalan.

Game rules:
Board: 10 x 8 (see image below).

The pieces:
Guard (G) - Moves and captures like a king.

Witch (W) - The witch is transparent to friendly pieces, and she also makes all adjacent pieces (friend and foe) transparent to friendly pieces (but pieces are not transparent for the witch). The witch does not capture other pieces, but she can be captured. Although pieces are not transparent to the witch, she is very agile; she combines the movement of queen, knight, and can jump orthogonally and diagonally two squares. Transparency of a piece means that other pieces can move, attack, and capture right through the piece.

Board Setup:

Note the position of black's king and queen are switched compared to classical chess. This is so the guard and witch are equal distance to each player's king and queen.

Castling:
The rules of castling are similar as in classical chess, however, with the board 10 squares wide, the king travels three squares rather than two. The rook finishes adjacent to the king (white: d1 or h1; black c8 or g8). All squares between the king and the involved rook must be unoccupied, with the exception of the witch (a witch is transparent to pieces in her own army so castling across the witch is allowed).

Other rules of this game are identical with rules of classical chess.

SuperSam1 plays white.

f4

1...d5

Be3

If your witch was standing next to a piece in front of my king and you had a Rook on the other side of that piece, would I be in check or would I be allowed to move a different piece and let you take my king?

Like this? In this position, you would be in check, so you would need to get your king out of check. Your only choice would be king to e1 or g2.

You could not block with your bishop on f2 because the bishop would be transparent also. Kg2 would be the best move I think because then the king attacks the witch, and a witch can't capture.

(This would actually be an interesting end-game. There is probably way for black to force a mate, but I can't figure it out right now. White has two pawns which could become promotion threats. But rooks and witches are pretty powerful. Someone estimated a witch's value at around 7, but not sure if that applies in endgames).

Can you promote to a guard or witch?

That's a good question - I should probably clarify that it's not allowed. It doesn't say specifically so in the rules, so pawns follow all the normal promotion rules (promote only to Q,R,B or N) but not anything else.

Promoting to a guard would probably never be useful. Underpromoting is sometimes needed to avoid stalemate, but an underpromotion to R or N should already serve that purpose.

Promoting to witch would be interesting. Endgames with a witch have not been explored a lot yet. Maybe some interesting situations can be found if one side had two or more witches. But it's ruled out. Of course other versions of bulldog can be tried in the future.

Btw, I'll probably play my return move (to 2.Be3) tomorrow. This game has a good start so far.

2...Nd6

Qf2

3...Nf5

B×a7

Unfortunately, musketeerchess.net did not have a witch or guard.

Great diagram from the Musketeer graphics tool. Looks good. The arrow and "X" also make it pretty clear that my pawn has been captured.

I'll play:

4...b6

B×Gu

5.Bxb8...Rxb8

Qc5

Ah well, oops.

I'm logging off now for awhile. I saw you immediately posted your oops comment, so feel free to post a different move if you'd like.

It's fine.