white made a mistake letting them get this organized and this close, but can they still win?
- All kings must be placed in checkmate. This is in recognition of multiple redundancy with failover.
- Knights cannot be captured by pawns. It’s ridiculous. You’re talking about a guy in armor riding a horse with both lance and sword versus a peasant wearing a shirt at best armed with a pointy stick. Literally the entire point of armor was that you could walk around mowing down peasants until your arms got tired.
- Queens slay, and can only be slayed by queens. See RuPaul’s Drag Race.
- I’m not even going to get into the Howl’s Moving Castle pieces except to note that if the enemy didn’t bring siege equipment, they’re pretty fucked.
Horses can be killed, and even a guy swinging pointy things can be overwhelmed by enough people.
I think what’s needed is the introduction of additional pieces.
- Pikemen - can’t move, but must face in a specific direction. Can attack any unit in front of them, but not to their sides/rear.
- Archers - can attack any unit at least two but no more than 3 spaces ahead of them.
- Trebuchets - similar to archers but can only attack 5-6 spaces ahead. Trebuchets can take out rooks.
- Knights can kill bishops, but only at the hinting request of the king. The bishops can then get a free attack on the king, but can only whip him and not kill him.
Eventually you’ll just end up reinventing Stratego
I was thinking that we could replace the board with a hexagon map and replace the pieces with printed cardboard squares.
I love me some turbulent priests
I like the cut of your jib*, yo!
Only the last king must be checkmated because on the next move they can be killed.
Is chess actually battle or represents a battle? Because after the knight moves, it could be the end of the day where he dismounts and sets up camp for the night. The next move is the pawn sneaking diagonally into his tent in the night.
can only be slayed by queens
French Pawns can build guillotines.
The peasants can become queens, so with these numbers they have a chance (although it won’t be trivial, tons of them will be wiped out before there will be queens not immediate threatened)
Black plays guillotine to E4
There is actually a chess variant quite similar:
It produces quite balanced games
You can play here: https://lichess.org/6aX06QRw
Note black has a normal composition here, not the arsenal of high value pieces from op. Op’s picture the pawns are definitely losing
cool!
Black wins after 21 moves.
I have nothing to disprove you but I think you’re right.
Um…cHaRgE!
Ka3xb5
The Revolution will not be impeded!
cxb5
Know your place, prole!
Kc3xb5
Pawns! BROTHERS! COMRADES!
Use Volley Fire!
The Revolution will not be civilised!
axb5
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Bloody peasant!
Kc3xb5
Casual commenter stopping through!
I’m not skilled at chess, but this was fun to think about. If you were truly inviting speculation, that is-
Assuming the game goes til the white kings are dealt with or all black pawns are dead - white wins easily.
If the winning condition was to capture any singular king, we might have a thrilling match
There’s a variant called ‘horde’ on lichess where it’s evenly balanced, and pretty fun!
I wonder what happens if the black pawns become the units they capture. As long as it doesn’t work the other way around black stands a good chance
Yeah but then black becomes the very thing they swore to destroy.
My other comment in this post included animal farm references XD
Are all pawns allowed to survive otherwise regular rules and have an option to upgrade to King?
Because if not, it appears the game already starts off at a checkmate… ☹️
The victory conditions are:
- black: kill sufficient kings so that the others divest their wealth.
- white: kill sufficient pawns such that the rebel spirit is broken, and they surrender
they need no king
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Pwned
I’m curious about the analogy when it comes to pawn promotion. I’m thinking ‘animal farm’, if a pawn somehow makes it to the end they change color. Also I believe if acted properly white would win (given another rank of pawns, or pawns lined up touching the other pieces, pawns would have a much better chance).
Perhaps it’s more of a banana republic revolution, where the people liberation hero becomes the next dictator, once the previous one has been overthrown
Shouldn’t there be a single row of white pawns also, though?
The “bootlickers,” they’re called.
Yes, exactly! Or a row of blue pawns.
I could make a bootlicker edition
Interesting example of zugzwang for white.
2 black pieces can move per turn?
Black already lost when they sacrificed their king.
No Gods No Masters.
They didn’t sacrifice King, the CIA murdered him.
