kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) (03/26/86)
Since the volume of traffic is rather low in this newsgroup, I feel justified in discussing chess-related games. (Flames via e-mail.) Several years ago, when I first learned to play Abbott's Ultima game, I played an interesting chess-ultima hybrid. My opponent (who claimed that the queen is much stronger than any piece in ultima) played with chess pieces, while I (who claimed that the immobilizer and coordinator are very powerful, and more than offset the queen's value) played with ultima pieces. In this variant the chameleon moves like a queen, but captures a chess piece (by displacement) along the capture lines associated with that piece. I don't remember who won, but neither of us changed opinion. I think one can create a quite interesting game by expanding the board and adding more pieces. For example, some interesting ultima-like pieces are the "Nullifier" (passively disables the power of any adjacent enemy piece; a nullified king may not make a capture; cf. Immobilizer) and the "Snowplow" (moves across any number of empty squares, may stop on an occupied square, pushing it (regardless of color) and all connected pieces in that line one space; captures by pushing an enemy piece off the edge of the board; cf. Tank). I've played a few games using these two and most of the ultima pieces on an 8x8 board. One of my favorite chess-like pieces is the "Edgehog", which always moves to or from the edge of the board. (I'm not sure if it can move from the edge to some other point on the edge; I think the exclusive-or is more interesting.) Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!bentley!kwh), The Walking Lint Fairy Chess? I wish they'd call it something else.