🚀 go-pugleaf

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.