Pawns move and capture in different ways. What if in a Chess game all pieces except the King would move and capture in different ways? The three basic pieces, Rook, Bishop and Knight, give rise to six combinations. These consist of a top-piece called the hunter which constitutes the way the piece captures and a bottom-piece called the carrier, which constitutes the way the piece moves. Of course only hunters can give check, therefore a piece is called after its hunter.
Also there are piece drops to avoid a drawish system; capture those enemy pieces and have them work for you!
As an afterthought came the concept of Dragonfly, which may be considered as 'normal Loonybird'.
The differences with orthodox Chess:
- The nature of the pieces has been explained, but for the option to re-enter them. If a piece is captured, it becomes the captor's property and he may drop it, at the cost of a turn, on any empty square. Until dropped, the captured piece stays put beside the captor's side of the board. As in all systems that feature the re-entering of pieces, this is called a 'piece in hand'.
- Pawns are the same as in orthodox Chess, but are not allowed the initial double step. They promote on moving to the far side to a piece the opponent has in hand. Pawns, if captured, are out of the game.
- The King is the same as in orthodox Chess. He has a castling option with the rook-Bishop under the usual conditions, moving to b1 with the rook-Bishop having the choice between c1 and d1. Castling with a dropped piece is not allowed.
The following applies specifically to the pawns in HexLoonybird:
- As in Loonybird, pawns move one cell forward, without the option of an initial double step. Different from Loonybird, pawns do not capture diagonally forward, but obliquely forward to a directly adjacent cell. Thus in the initial position, all pawns except the three backmost ones, are covered by one or two friendly pawns!
Try Loonybird on both a square board and a hexagon board...
Loonybird is just one of the games invented by Christian Freeling; they can all be seen, and some of them played, on the internet in the MindSports ArenA.
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