New Variant Preview: Chesspolitik (4p or 2p)

[NoPunIn10Did]

CHESSPOLITIK: Kings & Knights
A Perfectly Balanced Diplomacy Variant for 4 Players



Game Start: 1601
Total SCs: 32 (the darker spaces)
Total to Solo: 17

There are two types of units: Kings (K) and Knights (N).
Each moves and supports according to the adjacency they would have in chess.
Players may build in any SC that they own in the two rows/columns closest to their side of the board.
No retreats: all dislodged units are taken off the board.
No convoys.

[willie23]

I just want to clarify that Knights can move in an "L" shape as in chess, also support in the L shape. Can they "jump" over other units? This looks incredibly fun and I can't wait to sign up for a game.

Willie

[sinnybee]

Awesome! Everyone starts with 4 units and 5 SCs.
Kings and knights are like armies and fleets, the two build options, with retreats having normal Dip rules, I assume.
If green takes H2, they can build there later since it's in one of the 2 rows on their side, even though it's a starting SC of yellow?

[NJLonghorn]

with retreats having normal Dip rules, I assume.

You know what they say about assuming:

No retreats: all dislodged units are taken off the board.

[NoPunIn10Did]

Awesome! Everyone starts with 4 units and 5 SCs.
Kings and knights are like armies and fleets, the two build options, with retreats having normal Dip rules, I assume.
If green takes H2, they can build there later since it's in one of the 2 rows on their side, even though it's a starting SC of yellow?

Other than the retreats, which are all disbands, this is all correct.

[NoPunIn10Did]

I just want to clarify that Knights can move in an "L" shape as in chess, also support in the L shape. Can they "jump" over other units? This looks incredibly fun and I can't wait to sign up for a game.

Willie

All movement and support are done in the L shape, and they "jump" over other units to do so. Likewise, they cannot move or support to any other spaces than those. Because of this, a King and a Knight cannot support one another to hold at the same time.

[jay65536]

No game on this map would ever end in a stalemate--pretty sure stalemates are impossible in this variant.

[NoPunIn10Did]

And now, a two-player version of the same variant...

CHESSPOLITIK: Kings & Knights For Two



Game Start: 1401
Total SCs: 18 (the darker spaces)
Total to Solo: 12

Each player starts with 2 Kings, 2 Knights, and 3 SCs.

Similar to France in Hundred, this is a temporary increase to each player's unit count that only lasts for the first year. If a player remains at 3 SCs by the first Winter, they'll have to disband one of their units.

France may build in centers they control in rows 1 & 2. England may build in centers they control in rows 5 & 6.

[sinnybee]

Would be really cool to have the option of building a Queen for the cost of 2 builds...

[NoPunIn10Did]

Would be really cool to have the option of building a Queen for the cost of 2 builds...

I stuck with Kings and Knights because they're really the only pieces that translate well to Diplomacy's simultaneous moves. Like the Trans-Siberian Railway in Colonial, a piece that can move several spaces unless some obstruction shows up along the way is not terribly easy to adjudicate for. What if two queens cross paths, for instance? Would they bounce? If so, would they stop just short of the bounce or return to their original positions?

Kings move one space at a time, so they're an easy fit. Knights ignore pieces in between their origin and destination, so they also work well.

Pawns might work, but it's hard to see how their movement mechanics would translate, whereby they capture diagonally but move in a single orthogonal direction. Even if they did translate, what incentive would a player have to build new ones instead of just building kings?

Ultimately, I wanted to make something that appears to be vastly different on the surface but is in actuality a fairly vanilla Dip variant. Knights are ultimately just fleets by another name; one could say that they travel via a system of underground canals connecting the square provinces according to the L-shaped moves available to them.