Game Board Dimensions

GameMastery flip-mats are 24 squares by 30 squares. The Incompetech graph paper generator lite can create graph paper to match: using a square size of 0.3125 inches will leave a half-inch margin on the PDF. Making a flip-mat-sized map using this method would require a canvas of 1200 by 1500 pixels.

The generator lite is also a way to quickly create 8x10 or 8x12 boards for variant chesses. An 8x10 board can fit on letter-sized paper with 0.9375-inch squares, leaving a half-inch margin. An 8x12 board can fit on letter-sized paper with 0.83-inch or smaller squares. Inkscape can easily checker these PDFs for a quick-and-dirty board.

EDIT
I tend to prefer the square cross generator, usually. With a margin of 0.5 inches and 3 crosses per inch, it creates graph paper that is 22 cells by 30, which is only slightly narrower than a flip mat.

EDIT
Hexagonal maps are useful, but the dimensions of hexagons are not as straightforward as other tessellations. Hexagons are usually defined by their side length, but the distance between parallel sides is more useful for my purposes. That's, very roughly, about 1.732 times the side length. Hexagons big enough to hold 25-mm miniatures should have sides of about 15 mm.

Chess Variants 2

It's probably because chess variants are so easy to invent that there are so many of them. Luckily, I have discovered this extensive collection of chess variant-playing applets. Luckily for my wife, anyway, because I will stop pestering her. I have never been a fan of playing chess versus computers, but some of these are merely interesting, trivial games.

That category would include Dunsany's Chess, Joust Chess, Narrowness, and Peasant Revolt, some of which are games that are almost chess problems. Maharaja and Sepoys aptly demonstrates the overwhelming might of the amazon. It's also useful to have chess for four players, as well as the truly bizarre.

I remain fascinated by the toy chesses: Miniature Chess (5x5), Mini-Shogi, Toystore Chess, Petty Chess (5x6), Speed Chess, Dragonfly Chess (6x6), and the 19th-century Diana Chess. At the least, they seem like interesting ways to teach or learn chess, and games are very short.

There are a few variants inspired by fantasy or fiction, including Alice Chess, Gary Gygax's DragonChess, and Edgar Rice Burrough's Jetan, possibly the first fictional chess in speculative fiction.

Historical forms of the game and their derivations are represented by Chaturanga, Shatranj, Shogi, the circular Byzantine Shatranj, and its contemporary revival as Circular Chess.

Some of the modern chess variants like Berolina Chess aspire to be a serious direction for orthodox chess to go forward in the future. Aside from Fischer Random Chess, the most common variation of chess invented by skilled players for serious play includes two pieces, one that combines the moves of the bishop and knight and the other that combines the rook and knight, and a consequently larger board. These combination pieces date to at least 1617, but there is no consenus on whether to use one or both pieces, nomenclature, castling rules, initial setup, or board size. Capablanca Chess, developed by world chess champion José Raúl Capablanca (and played with Emmanuel Lasker), and Grand Chess are important contenders, although there are several others (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Dandelion mini-shatranj & mini-chaturanga

Chaturanga, of course, is the medieval Indian game that became contemporary chess after it passing through Persia as shatranj and into Europe. Dandelion shatranj is a minimalistic miniature shatranj inspired by mini-shogi (tho with somewhat less interesting gameplay) and named for the small, weedy flowers that pop up everywhere so easily. Gameplay and moves are exactly like shatranj, but occurs on a 5x5 board with only six pieces and a somewhat modified setup.

5  r e n c k
4  - - - - p
3  - - - - -
2  P - - - -
1  K C N E R
   a b c d e

King (K): Moves as in orthodox chess.
Counselor (C): Moves one square diagonally in any direction.
Knight (N): Moves as in orthodox chess.
Elephant (E): Moves two squares diagonally in any direction, jumping over the intervening square.
Rook (R): Moves as in orthodox chess.
Pawn (P): Moves as in orthodox chess. When they arrive at the last rank on the board, pawns promote to counselors only.

Miniature shatranj has very limited play, but may be fun for a few games. There are only three or so viable opening moves, for example, and the elephant can only visit three squares on the board including its starting square. The king is fairly powerful, often threatening as many squares as the rook.

Mini-chaturanga is a group of variants on mini-shatranj, offering different early historical versions of the elephant's move. Standard mini-chaturanga is essentially the same as mini-shatranj, but the first player to expose a bare king wins without exception.

War Elephant Mini-Chaturanga: The elephant can move two squares orthogonally in any direction, jumping over the intervening square. This is the move of the Dabbabah, or war engine.

Silver Elephant Mini-Chaturanga: The elephant can move one square diagonally in any direction, and one square orthogonally forward. This is the move of the silver general of contemporary xiangqi and shogi, but in mini-chaturanga this piece does not promote.

Double Happiness Mini-Chaturanga: The elephant can move two squares orthogonally or two squares diagonally, jumping over the intervening square. This unhistorical move, as the alibaba, combines the move of the elephant and the dabbabah.

Chess Variants

I think the first chess variant I was seriously interested in was Gary Gygax's dragonchess. It seemed like it'd be hard to get a set together, and gameplay'd be outlandish and complicated. And it is!

There are plenty of others, but I've played almost none of them. By far the most interesting, for a number of reasons, is Alice Chess. The pieces go through the looking glass every time they move. The most worthwhile is Fischer random chess or Chess960, invented in 1996 by Bobby Fischer.

Chess with different forces also looks interesting, especially Dunsany's chess. These are probably in the "a game or two would be fun" category.

There are a couple of four-handed chess games, aside from stuff like chaturanga and Enochian chess. I think the Dessau chessboard looks the most practical, as it eliminates pawn capture problems. Four-handed competitive play sounds more interesting than cooperative play. The Battle of Four Armies: capture an enemy king to force that player out of the game (their pieces cannot move or threaten, but are not removed from play until individually captured) and the last king standing wins.

The miniature shogi variants look like they give quick and elegant games. There are a couple of miniature versions of orthodox chess: HP Minichess, apparently presented by Marvin Gardner in Scientific American, is played on a 5x5 board. Toystore Chess is essentially miniature chess with placing. Quick Chess and Speed Game Chess are played on a 5x6 board.

The shogi variants are wild and impressive. Five-minute poppy shogi and mini-shogi are beautifully minimalistic, while taiyoku shogi is epically huge and unwieldy: there are 1296 squares on the board and each side has 402 pieces of 209 different types, totalling 253 different moves. Totally crazy.

My First Dragonchess Set

About a year ago, I made a set with which to play dragonchess, the three-dimensional fantasy chess variant invented by Gary Gygax for a story in the 100th issue of Dragon magazine. I made the pieces out of polymer clay, painted gold and scarlet. Rather than copying the conventional Staunton chess piece design of the 19th century, I based the design on the original Persian designs that entered Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages.

Although the first chautaranga pieces from India were representational, Islam's proscriptions against iconography caused the pieces of shatranj to assume a very abstract, nonrepresentational form. Since chess came to Europe through the Islamic world, the earliest Spanish, French, and Viking chess sets had more abstract shapes. I thought it would be an interesting variant—especially with my primitive sculpting skills. Also, I gave the pieces for the lower, upper, and middle boards different shapes (cubes, cylinders, and pyramids respectively) to help distinguish the pieces. The boards are posterboard and watercolor.

Rather than the 8x8 board of chess, dragonchess uses three 12x8 boards. Each player, both Gold and Scarlet, has 6 Slyphs, 1 Dragon, 2 Griffons, 12 Warriors, 2 Oliphants, 2 Unicorns, 2 Heros, 2 Thieves, 1 Cleric, 1 Paladin, 1 Mage, 1 King, 6 Dwarfs, 2 Basilisks, and 1 Elemental. That's 15 unit types and 42 individual figures, compared to the 5 unit types and 16 figures of orthodox chess.

I've played a few games of dragonchess since putting the set together. It is a very complicated game. Some of the pieces move similarly to orthodox chess; others move slightly differently; and nearly every piece that can move around the board does so in a different way. These moves are not at all systematic. It is confusing to keep straight the moves, blockable and unblockable and special powers of each piece, and it usually involves a lot of referring to the instructions.

Apparently Gygax didn't spend a lot of time playtesting this game.

The Lower Board...


The Middle Board...


The Upper Board...


The pieces of conventional chess...


Arranged for a game of conventional chess...


The lower board pieces (basilisk, elemental, elemental, & basilisk; dwarves in front)...


The dragonchess-specific middle board pieces (thief, paladin, cleric, & thief)...


The upper board pieces (griffin, dragon, dragon, & griffin; sylphs in front)...