Chess 2: The Sequel

[Woodchuck]

No, this is not a movie sequel to the Search for Bobby Fischer.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html
Apparently, Sirlin (the author we know and love for his Playing to Win series) has helped create a sequel to chess. Its changes from chess include:

• No Stalemates (if you have no legal moves to make, you lose)
• New Win Condition: If you manage to get your king to cross the midline of the board into your opponent's half (without moving into check), you win. this is in addition to normal checkmate
• Including the normal chess set, there are six different 'armies' to choose from with different modifications to the pieces' abilities
• Dueling -- if your opponent captures one of your pieces, you can "duel" by expending some number of 'stones' (you start with three and gain them by capturing pawns) -- the person who bet more stones wins the duel

Here, I've uploaded the pdf for the rulebook to google drive so that you don't need to go through the obnoxious zero-dollar transaction to download it on sirlin's site:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7Ae2VgrLfsoSUtKTDd0RnIweTg/edit?usp=sharing

There were quite a few of us discussing strategies for this in #pokemon today. I played a couple of games with my brother, and my impression is that the Reaper army has a terrible matchup against Two Kings as you don't have the rooks or queen to stop the two kings from advancing; you basically have to rely on pawns. Pawns themselves are pretty damn important in this game.
I did end up dismantling Nemesis with Reaper by stacking up pawns to use in duels and using the invincible ghost rooks and reaper queen to clear a path for my king to cross the midline. Advancing your king across the board seems to be a much easier way to win than checkmate, at least for armies like Reaper and Two Kings that seem to be designed for this. Nemesis is probably much better at checkmating, but you can still fuck around with the pawns to give the king a lane to the midline.

Also, I have no idea where you can play this game online; I know that there will be a chess 2 game coming out for the ouya (lol) soon. If anyone catches wind of an online chess 2 sim (or some way to play it other than messaging your opponent 1. e4 e5 via irc or something lol).

 

[tehy]

BY POPULAR DEMAND, ACTUAL DISCUSSION.


We all know that chess is a great strategic game, like the one we all play (Competitive Pokemon.) But it's lacking in a few key elements of these games-there's no mindgames, and the game can be 'solved' by a computer.

Chess 2 solves basically all of this, while injecting a lot of interesting new mechanics and creating actual different armies. Which is awesome, and makes a great game really great.

Edit: Hi;if a computer can beat a human always, then yes, it's solvable. As for the weird-move thing...you can see basically everything, so you know everything they can do, especially if you're super familiar with all the mechanics and moves. This shakes up that familiarity, which makes it even more difficult when timed, while also introducing the dueling mechanic (Which can mess you up no matter how well you plan.)

Also, you may now make puns or jokes in chess about:

King Me; Stones;Jungle Fever, Ghosts, and the Reaper.

I shall play empowered every time and every time two units combine their movement i'll be like SOUL RESONANCE. (Also, empowered is looking like a really interesting army. Should be cool to see what you can pull off.)

 

[hyperbeem]

dibs on the jungle queen

 

[capefeather]

My first thought: This would be awesome to program.

Also: Apparently "empowered" is a codeword for "misogynist" ;)

We all know that chess is a great strategic game, like the one we all play (Competitive Pokemon.) But it's lacking in a few key elements of these games-there's no mindgames, and the game can be 'solved' by a computer.

jsyk this game can still theoretically be solved, and chess hasn't actually been solved yet.

 

[Jorgen]

We all know that chess is a great strategic game, like the one we all play (Competitive Pokemon.) But it's lacking in a few key elements of these games-there's no mindgames, and the game can be 'solved' by a computer.

Chess 1 is hardly a solved game right now, although I'll give you that it's theoretically possible for a computer to solve for the perfect game of chess. And there's plenty of mindgames in Chess 1, how many times have you messed up because your opponent made a weird move and you thought they saw something you didn't? That shit happens all the damn time.

Even if these were issues, I don't see how Chess 2 does a lot to "solve" these. It just adds more elements to make analysis more complex, and adds but two measly elements of uncertainty: starting the match with initial army selection, and the dueling mechanic.

In terms of the actual game, I kinda like the idea of Nemesis. I see it being a very defensive way to play the game in all honesty, with the invincible nemesis blocking king advances while your own pawns with their expanded freedom in movement slowly gain space for your king to encroach on your opponent's space.

 

[capefeather]

Knight -> Wild Horse. Moves as a knight, but can capture its own pieces.

Rook -> Elephant. Can only move up to 3 squares orthogonally. It can capture both friendly and enemy pieces, even multiple pieces in one move.

Can you duel your own pieces, then? It sounds silly, but it is possible for it to be advantageous, especially under specific elephant rampage circumstances. I'm disappointed, rulebook. Couldn't plug all the obscurities...

 

[Jebus McAzn]

wait woodchuck if a warrior king can't move into check then how does two kings deal with nemesis at all

 

[Jorgen]

I think the idea is that they might be able to eradicate pawns with their shockwave attack. It's conceivable that the opponent's board could have light/dark square weaknesses where a warrior king could find a home, and then just wipe out those pawns.

 

[Woodchuck]

I have posted questions that cape brought up / other things we talked about on the chess 2 subforum on the fantasy strike forums here. Sirlin actually seems to read/reply to that forum, so hopefully we should get some answers and I can repost them.

Also, nemesis does seem to be the best vs Two Kings, lol. And Reaper is excellent against Nemesis from my experience. Rock paper scissors?

 

[Houndoomsday]

how can a chess 1 king capture a nemesis at all? it seems very hard and basically gives nemesis army a free piece to gum up the board and prevent midline invasion

empowered seems really fun and good for perceptive players, but losing the real queen for 'situational' queens hurts their viability. in addition the longer a game lasts the weaker empowered gets as they slowly lose pieces to combo together.

reaper seems like a really neat playstyle, am i reading it right that the queen can teleport to capture another piece? this really puts offensive pressure on the opponents to make sure each piece can revenge kill if the queen tp's and captures, and then the reaper can use the ghosts to block those lines.

two kings seems kinda boring, but i cant really think of much to say

animals seem really useful. wild horse can use extra mobility, but also can capture own pawns to deny stones. tiger can pick off pieces that would otherwise be safe (ex pawn guarded by queen), and hold central locations with ease. i feel like the elephant cant really be judged until you have some experience in a real game, but i would take a gander and say it is quite powerful. jungle queen seems really neat. one thing the animals do suffer with is a lack of long range pressure, but the elephant forces closer fights and i think that is easily made up for.

my (obviously tentative and theorymonned) rankings are: animals, empowered, reaper, two kings, nemesis, vanilla

edit: if someone finds a way to play online hmu

 

[Soul Fly]

Can you duel your own pieces, then? It sounds silly, but it is possible for it to be advantageous, especially under specific elephant rampage circumstances. I'm disappointed, rulebook. Couldn't plug all the obscurities...

You can. If you have access to the Wild Horse, which is a wild card upgrade for the Knight piece.

 

[Woodchuck]

Sirlin replied to me!
"You can't duel your own pieces, as that doesn't make any sense. The rules say you gain a stone for capturing an enemy pawn, so capturing a non-enemy pawn wouldn't give a stone. The rules say that you can't move into check on your normal turn or you king-turn. If your kings are pinned, and you move one of them, then you just finished your normal turn in check, so you can't do that. It's game over for you unless you can capture the piece pinning your kings, or block that piece, or something like that."

 

[panamaxis]

this looks really interesting. With the ghost rooks in reaper, I'm assuming that even though they can't capture it would still be an illegal move to put your king in their line of fire? Is that right? Assuming that's correct, Reaper army looks great for preventing midline invasion but on the other hand aren't you pretty much losing 2 powerful attacking pieces just to restrict king movements? Do the invincible rooks have much use apart from limiting king movement?

 

[Soul Fly]

this looks really interesting. With the ghost rooks in reaper, I'm assuming that even though they can't capture it would still be an illegal move to put your king in their line of fire? Is that right? Assuming that's correct, Reaper army looks great for preventing midline invasion but on the other hand aren't you pretty much losing 2 powerful attacking pieces just to restrict king movements? Do the invincible rooks have much use apart from limiting king movement?

From what I've seen reaper falls in the category of high sacrifice playstyles which in exchange grant you (seemingly) broken plays with important pieces. It's a style that literally forces encounters, and urges you to be aggressive with your queen's frontline. I can easily see this playstyle being used to exhaust your opponent's stones at an alarming clip.

 

[panamaxis]

by sacrificial playstyle do you mean just sacrificing everything to try and get the midline invasion? Conventional checkmating has got to be extremely hard without the queen or rooks being able to capture the king. So you're basically forced to go for the midline invasion since it's the only reasonable win condition.... right?

Trading 1 for 1 is almost certainly disadvantageous for the reaper as well since you already have limited pieces to threaten the king with, trading off a knight/bishop is going to favour the other army moreso than you. So yeah i guess you have to throw EVERYTHING you have into getting that midline invasion.

Idk it just seems to me that with the rook nerfs you only have one reasonable win condition while all the other armies can at least go for conventional checkmate.

 

[Houndoomsday]

rooks are great for blocking crucial lines of site and the reaper puts a lot of pressure on the opponent, as it is able to pick off rushed pieces. And considering the fact that a midline invasion from the opponent is nearly a joke because of the ghosts you have less pressure put on you. In addition you can use the rooks aggressively to disrupt defensive lines. obviously this is all theory but i feel like you are underestimated the reaper a bit.

 

[panamaxis]

yeah those are good points, although conventional checkmating is a harder for the reaper, by the same token i guess midline invasion is harder for the opposing army.

 

[Woodchuck]

I don't know about midline invasion being harder for the opposing army. Two Kings midline invades well against Reaper simply because Reaper has no Rook or Queen to be able to check along a rank -- you nearly have to rely on pawns and bishops to control space. Knights can't really check Two Kings because they can move adjacent to the knight and whirlwind.

I was more successful using Reaper to prevent midline invasions from different armies, though. I could basically take pawns nearly with impunity and prevent very much development of knights / bishops with the reaper queen against armies like Nemesis, so that essentially stifled midline invasion. By taking pawns I could both gain stones and advance my own pawns to control the board. I think the Reaper army makes the game very much about using pawns to control space.

 

[Lord Jesseus]

I played against my brother, he wasn't fan of the midline invasion rule. He thinks it takes the strategy out of it.

As the victor, I liked it. :p

 

[lilyhollow]

Whoa it's nice to see this stuff here!

I've playtested this game against the programmer a bunch (haven't had very much time recently though), it's really really really good and I'm really scared about what it might do to me if I decide to get super serious with it. I was expecting to see lots of hate in this thread, so I was all ready to post words and stuff. My day just got way brighter!

For the record, the game is going to be publicly playable online at some point in the near future. I think it's going to be exclusive to the Ouya for a little while, though. Probably a good idea to just follow @ludemegames on twitter or something, since they're the ones actually putting it out.

More peeps better be talking about this in #pokemon soon okay.

 

[Soul Fly]

For the record, the game is going to be publicly playable online at some point in the near future. I think it's going to be exclusive to the Ouya for a little while, though. Probably a good idea to just follow @ludemegames on twitter or something, since they're the ones actually putting it out.

Oh boi. Rejoice.

 

[Trax]

Going to be honest and say I don't see this as "Chess 2", more like "Turn Based Tactical Board Game 523894392".

Makruk > Chess anyway.

 

[JimBob]

I've been playing this with a friend recently, because we were intrigued. Our conclusion: 2 Kings is nearly unbeatable. That second move every turn puts just way too much pressure on the opponent.

All the other armies are pretty even, we think.

 

[TUO]

I'm gonna try this Chess 2 thing on monday with a couple of my friends

 

[Houndoomsday]

yo anyone want to find a way to play this online?