Ancient Battles Chess

This is a page for the development of my ideas for a Hyper-large CV. It was inspired by the super-large CV designs of Joe Joyce.

The principal design aim behind the game is to push Chess as far towards the realms of Wargaming as possible while still remaining recognizably Chess. The initial designs envisaged the use of an hexagonal-celled board, but this has now been replaced by a board with square cells. In line with this the working title has also been changed from Hyborian Hyper HexaChess to Ancient Battles Chess.

The Board

This is constructed from 24 standard 8x8 boards layed out in a 6x4 grid to give a 48x32 playing area of 1536 squares.

The image below illustrates the start position for the basic game.

abcbasicstart-c-815-green.png

Sides

The Sides are Red and Gold.
Red uses Black (or Blue) pieces and Red pieces while Gold uses White pieces and gold (yellow) pieces.
Gold has the first turn.

Each side starts the game with 130 mobile Pieces (see Piece Density Function ) and 15 static pieces, made up of

Name LT Description Extra Number Playing Piece
Pawn Constant Wizard Rider - 32 Black/White Pawn
Page Wizard Rider - 24 Red/Gold Pawn
Squire Knight Rider - 16 Black/White Knight
Knight Barbarian Riding Knight Rider - 8 Red/Gold Knight
Spear Elephant Rider range 8 16 Black/White Bishop
Sling Elephant range 12 12 Red/Gold Bishop
Bow Alfil range 16 8 Black/White Rook
Catapult Ferz range 20 4 Red/Gold Rook
Captain Guard Rider formation 6 4 Black/White Queen
General 3-step Guard Rider formation 9 3 Red/Gold Queen
Marshal 4-step Guard Rider formation 12 2 Black/White King
King Guard formation 15 1 Red/Gold King
Barricade - Static Impassable Terrain 12 2x Black/White Draughtsman
Prince - Static Target or Objective 3 Red/Gold Draughtsman

The Basic Game

Turns

A players turn consists of a number of movement phases, each of which may be followed by a melee phase.
The maximum number of movement phases is determined by reference to the number off Command points available at the start of turn. A player is allowed one movement phase for every 4 command points. At the start of the game a player has 20 command points ( 4 Captains worth 1 each, 3 Generals worth 2 each, 2 Marshals worth 3 each and the King worth 4) and thus has 5 possible movement phases. A player must use at least one movement phase per turn and no piece may be moved more than once per turn

A movement phase consists of either of the following:

  • moving a single piece - the following image shows the movement applicable to each piece:
abc1536moves-green.png
  • moving a formation

A formation is a group of 2 or more pieces of the same type and each of which is orthogonally adjacent to at least one other and one of which is orthogonally adjacent to a Command piece. This Command piece will determine the maximum number of pieces in the formation. When moving a formation each piece making up the formation is moved individually, but after the first piece has moved, each subsequently moved piece must finish orthogonally adjacent to previously moved piece. The Command piece is not moved as part of the formation, but may be moved as part of a later movement phase.

The two images on the right illustrate a formation move and the following melee. The first image shows a formation of 7 Gold Knights about to advance under the command of a Gold Marshal. As indicated by the black arrows, the rear 4 move their full 2-steps to make contact with the Red Pages, while the front 3 take a single step to provide suppport.

The position after the movement phase is shown by the second image.

After a movement phase a melee may be declared between any piece just moved and an enemy piece that is orthogonally adjacent, to it. A melee (or melees) may also be declared at the start of a player's turn (i.e. before any movement phases) between any of the player's pieces and an orthogonally adjacent enemy. Each such melee will reduce that turn's available movement phases by 1.
abc1536melee-a-green.png

to be continued…


Optional rules

1. Initial set-up

At the start of play the board is empty and the game begins with a set-up phase of 4 rounds.

Round-1:

  • Gold player places none, some, or all Barricade pieces anywhere in the gold half of the board.
  • Red player places none, some, or all Barricade pieces anywhere in the red half of the board.

Round-2

  • Gold player places the King and 3 Princes. The King may be placed anywhere in the gold half of the board. The Princes may be placed in sections …tbc
  • Red player places the King and 3 Princes. The King may be placed anywhere in the red half of the board. The Princes may be placed in sections …tbc

Round-3

  • Gold player places all Command and Missile pieces. Pieces may not be deployed beyond …tbc
  • Red player places all Command and Missile pieces. Pieces may not be deployed beyond …tbc

Round-4

  • Gold player places all remaining pieces. Pieces may not be deployed beyond …tbc
  • Red player places all remaining pieces. Pieces may not be deployed beyond …tbc

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