Normie Chess

Taking inspiration from https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/sht-non-chess-players-say and some personal experiences with playing chess, I thought I'd show off a variant that has been quite popular with me and my group of mates for the past year or so. It's intentionally bad of course, but that's the real beauty of playing it.

As the name suggests, normie chess incorporates various mistakes which non-chess players (or, NORMIES) often tend to make. The rule changes make the game chaotic in style, and the rules of chess that we know are mostly lost to the void. So, how is normie chess played?

• Standard 8x8 board.
• Standard chess setup, EXCEPT: The king and queen are swapped; and the bishops and knights are swapped.
• Some of the names for the pieces are changed: the pawns are now referred to as 'soldiers', the knights 'horses', and the rooks 'castles.' 

Pawns, knights, and rooks no longer exist. They are totally different from their chess counterparts. The king starts on his own colour. 

In regular old boring chess, White always moved first. But of course, we want both sides to be equal™. We can't let those evil white pieces move first, nuh-uh. So, in normie chess, so that both sides have an equal chance of getting the advantage, the player who moves first is decided by a coinflip: heads black, tails white. Now, the sides are equal. And no evil chess """"""expert"""""" is going to tell us normie chess players otherwise!

Also in regular old boring chess, stalemate was a draw. Well no more. If you stalemate your opponent, they lose.

Now, oftentimes there came a point where you were stuck. You didn't know what to move. Maybe you were even in zugzwang, oh no! Normie chess fixes all of this. If you're stuck, you always have the option to pass your move onto your opponent! Passive is a strong™ defensive™ move sure to make your opponent think twice!

In regular old boring chess, you had to checkmate the king in order to win. Checkmate no longer exists. You must simply capture the king in order to win. There are no checks or checkmates here in normie chess; a king can even directly move into enemy fire (but this is not recommended!).

In regular old boring chess, castling does not exist either. Moving two pieces in the one move is cheating and against the rules. Also, en passant does not exist either: after studying thousands upon thousands of chess games, it was discovered that en passant was barely even used! Better to get rid of it.

So, that's all the rule changes. What about the pieces, then? 

• Soldiers move and capture 1 square vertically and diagonally forward. When they get to your opponent's back row, they have the option to promote. A soldier can promote to any piece your opponent has captured previously. If they haven't captured anything, it just sits there. Note that promoting is optional, so even if they have captured something, you don't need to automatically promote. If you decline the initial chance to promote, you can automatically promote your soldier after moving another piece.
• Horses move one square orthogonally and then one square diagonally outward. It captures every piece in its path when moving - friendly and enemy. Therefore, it can potentially capture two pieces in one move!
• Bishops move and capture an unlimited number of squares diagonally, or one square orthogonally.
• Castles move an unlimited number of squares orthogonally.
• Queens combine the power of bishop and castle.
• The king moves one square in any direction. Note that the king can move into attack, and is required to be captured in order to win the game.

And that's the gist of normie chess. A very tongue-in-cheek variant, able to be played on a regular chessboard.

Well, if it reminds you of your early chess days, then it's done a good job, hasn't it?

I just wonder how valuable each piece is, though. Like, I could say that from weakest to strongest, it'd be soldier/castle/horse/bishop/queen/king, but I couldn't give an exact number. Considering that the horse can potentially capture 2 pieces in 1 move, it might be stronger, but I'm not sure. It's not like I'm desperate for theory on this - it is after all very tongue-in-cheek.