Let's invent some very weird pieces

Awesome!

When it comes to randomness I do not like it when the variance of good or bad dice rolls are high or when it feels like randomness decides games more than skill. It's hard to design pieces with that in mind and capturing 6 pieces sound way too overpowered. That's just my view though there's nothing wrong to decide games by luck if that is what players want.

A chess variant I have made that I really like is based on randomness. You start a normal game and then a player can once/game during their turn roll a dice and depending on which number you get an event will start that changes some rules. Essentially you start playing a chess variant in the middle of the game. Each player rolling a dice once/game means a combination of 2 variant will be played and all games will differ a lot. The thing with randomness in my variant though is that the dice roll very rarely decides the game. The player that adapts best to the new ruleset or play better overall tends to win.

The gnome:

Gnomes can only capture any other piece if you have at least two Gnomes attacking that other piece. That gives us three levels of protection against capture, the others being all normal chess pieces, and Dwarfs. I'm not sure if, for consistency, I should now state that at least four Gnomes must attack a Dwarf before a Gnome can capture a Dwarf.

More in general, one could conceive of a ranking, where any piece can be captured, if the attacking pieces have enough combined powers outweighing the rank of the target.

To be continued.

I thought about introducing Flags for chess with more than 2 players.
In the course of the game, the Flags will drive the teaming up of players.
In 3-player chess we would have two white Flags and one black Flag. In 4-player chess we would have two of each.

The colour of a Flag is important, but not related to the colour of any army.
Any army can capture any Flag. A Flag has no own movement.

A Flag is initially surrounded by stones. Stones are dead objects that must be captured as they are initially blocking access to the Flags.

If one player manages to capture a second Flag, that player immediately wins the entire game, provided that he or she has no King left in check. (As a consequence, each player will probably try to capture at least one Flag.)

If a player captures a Flag, that Flag must be placed on that player's side of the board, so it's colour remains clearly visible to all players.

If two players - say player A and B - have captured a Flag of the same colour, than from that moment their armies are immune to each other. Their pieces can no longer capture each other or give check to each other's King. This condition remains until all remaining players are out of the game, or until the game ends in another way.

So this way, players become allies, whether or not they planned this on beforehand, and can only start battling ech other after slaughtering all other armies first.
(But a player who is bound to an alliance, can still trick his ally and take the win by capturing a second Flag.)

Your piece designs are very nice and impressive. But this thread is really about designing new rules for how pieces could have side effects to their moves, so your posts are totally off topic, and threaten to hijack the thread. I think it would be better to dedicate a separate thread for the design of physical pieces.

 Why is this obvious advertising coming in my topic all the time? By 'weird pieces' I mean each next piece has an aspect which can't be found in all previous pieces. Your pieces are far from weird: only more this-is-how-they-move-and-this-is-how-they-capture pieces.

The archer

Moves like a knight and can shoot a piece 1 or 2 squares orthogonally or diagonally.
It does not move when shooting
Worth 7 points

The archer: A cool idea for a piece which combines two type of moves, but can only make one type of move in a single turn. (one move is traditional "capture", the other is a stationary attack).

Also: I missed evert823's idea about placing flags on a chessboard. It's a cool new idea for a win condition, and also a neat idea to use as a basis for forming teams.

Pretty cool!

NICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like the exploding pieces!!!!!!!!!!!!!! definitely a cool

Can ya make them bleed as they leave the battle field??????????????????

I have an idea for Grim Reaper:

In one turn he can either capture or walk, but not both.

Capture:
Grim Reaper captures one orthogonally adjacent enemy piece, but remains on his own square. If more pieces are orthogonally adjacent, he can capture only one of them in one turn.
Grim Reaper himself is immune to capture, even by an enemy Grim Reaper. (When combined with other extraordinary pieces, I intend to make him immune for almost all of them.)

Walk:
Grim Reaper can walk any number of Knight moves, and change direction at will. But on his path, he can only visit squares which are orthogonally adjacent to friendly pieces. Still, he can unexpectedly pop up anytime anywhere.

In the below diagram:
The white Grim Reaper on c3 could capture the Bishop on b3 (while staying on c3). Or he could walk to a6 as indicated.
The black Grim Reaper on h6 could capture the Knight on i6 (while staying on h6). Or he could walk to b4 as indicated.

Interesting! You could have stopped after the knight-move/capture rule and it would have been a really great piece.

Then you made the grim reaper immune to death (or "non-capturable")!

Then his move is a repeating knight move!

Then while moving it can only land next to only friendly pieces!

Not an easy piece to calculate. But I guess it's the "grim reaper" so anything more simple just wouldn't be right.

(thanks for the move diagram btw. Helps me understand this most unusual of pieces).

That ruleset on the grim reaper does sound very interesting. I guess being limited to squares orthogonally adjacent to friendly pieces and not being able to capture and move at the same time might make it manageable. The part that worries me a bit with pieces like this though is that if it manages to block a pawn that pawn is pretty much dead. So in many cases moving a pawn to the 4th rank might be an over extension and each step forward becomes much harder. Being afraid of over extending pawns and not being able to have reliable outposts for your pieces would make the game really hard to play. Not unplayable and by all means some interesting dynamics, but really hard.

By the way I also made a very different rule suggestion for the grim reaper in post #257

Thanks vickalan. But how I put it so far will give us 99,99999% chance that each player will capture that flag which is most easily reached. I am looking for some limitations, for example only certain pieces can capture a flag and only certain other pieces can remove a stone.

Ok, I went back to look at this, but not sure if I understand it.

The grim reaper can copy an opponent's move, to capture it? (like it can move like a bishop to capture a bishop)?

"Players keep captured pieces as souls" - means the grim reaper can gain the moves of the captured pieces?  If correct, does this happen as a move, or is it automatic?

Sounds like a good idea even if it's not what you meant.

Souls is just a fancy word I used for captured pieces with the only addition that they need to be removed from the list when used. It is automatic. The capturing rule is almost, but not quite as you describe.

Here, you can see that among the captured pieces, white has captured a bishop, pawn and witch, so those are the souls white can use. White can for example use the bishop as a soul and move the grim reaper to e1. This would remove the bishop from the list of souls, so after that the grim reaper can not move like a bishop again until he captures another bishop.

White can also use the witch as a soul which would allow him to play Rxa8. Then the witch would disappear from the soul list and unable to be used again.

Black can very similarly remove the queen as a soul and play a move like Gh2+. He would like to pretend this is checkmate, but since he used the queen the grim reaper can no longer move like a queen. Therefor white can respond with Kj2.

The special capturing rule is a bit special. From whites perspective, there are 3 pieces that threatens to capture his grim reaper. The rook on a8, lumberjack on b2 and the grim reaper on h5. The grim reaper on h5 is only threatening to capture because that player has a queen as a soul. As a move, white can capture any of these pieces with his grim reaper. Either Gxa8, Gxb2 or Gxh5. So while typically making capturing moves like this seem to copy the enemies move it doesn't exactly do that as can be seen when capturing the lumberjack.

From blacks perspective there are 2 pieces that threatens to capture the grim reaper. The knight on g3 and the grim reaper on a5 (the other grim reaper only threatening to capture because blacks grim reaper can capture). Therefor Gxg3 or Gxa5 is both legal moves for black without using any of his souls.

When we bring figures from tales to the chess board, I prefer that the new chess piece inherits as much as possible from the original creature. Killing Grim Reaper doesn't make sense since he represents death. But I also realize that the piece might become more manageable and playable if it could be captured.