Capture your opponent's last queen to win.
4 variants
(4 2-D perspectives of a spherical, 3-D game):
- white whole | black quartered (shown below)
- black whole | white quartered
- white halved N & S | black halved E & W
- black halved N & S | white halved E & W
A draw is impossible.
Each player begins the game with 8 queens.
Once the last queen of either player has been captured,
the game will end immediately.
The pendulum-move rule applies which dictates double-moves
alternating between the two players throughout the game
except for the very first move which is only a single-move by white.
All available 4-, 5-, 6-, 7- directional moving pieces can be half-promoted
into pieces with 1 additional direction of movement at the cost of 3 moves.
All available 4- & 6- directional moving pieces can be single-promoted
into pieces with 2 additional directions of movement at the cost of 4 moves.
All rooks (4-directional moving pieces) can be double-promoted
into queens with 4 additional directions of movement at the cost of 6 moves.
All pieces capable of movement can capture by replacement
any enemy or neutral pieces.
Portals connect opposite edges along all 8 geometrically-contiguous
directions of linear movement possible within the square-spaced,
flat 2-D gameboard.
Consequently, 8 directions of movement are available from every
square-space within the flat 2-D gameboard.
Essentially, this is a spherical surface, 3-D chess variant that can be
represented accurately and played well using as few or as many
of the 4 available, congruent opening setups as desirable
within the flat 2-D gameboard due to its exclusive usage of 2-D pieces.
This means that an entire game played via any 1 given opening setup
can be completed transposed, move-by-move, into entire games
played via all of the other congruent opening setups.
Notably, the naive appearance of geometrical asymmetry in 2-D
between the two armies with any given opening setup is totally illusionary.
When the fact that the 2-D gameboard has no real edges in any way
(i.e., continuous space), despite its flat 2-D representation to the contrary,
is taken into account, the positions and available moves for
all of the 2-D pieces of the white army, relative to everything
(friendly pieces, neutral pieces, enemy pieces and empty spaces),
are mirror-image symmetrical to those of the black army.
In reality, a 4-fold, perfect, holistic 3-D geometrical symmetry
applicable to the surface of a sphere exists for this game
despite the limitations due to its flat 2-D representations.
This is the disadvantage to using flat 2-D representations
of a spherical-surface, 3-D chess variant.
The 2 most symmetrical, representative, opening setups
(white whole - black quartered & black whole - white quartered)
out of 4 available maintain perfect quadrilateral symmetry in 2-D
by north-south, east-west, northwest-southeast and northeast-southwest axes.
The playing surface consisting of a finite, 2-D plane with a square-spaced,
flat 2-D gameboard of 20 x 20 spaces (400 spaces total) and a square shape
overall (apparently) is perfectly mapped onto the surface of a finite 3-D sphere.
[Note: The true shape overall of the square-spaced, flat 2-D gameboard
is actually circular. This is not obvious. Instead, it appears to be square
due to the commonplace elongation of the diagonal dimension and/or
shortening of the orthogonal dimension which is the universal convention
for representing them.
This implicates why a perfect mapping onto the surface of a 3-D sphere,
from a circle rather than a square, is ideally suitable and achievable.]
Fortunately, the players are not required to deal with any complex, confusing
3-D curvature characteristic to a spherical playing surface.
This is the advantage to using flat 2-D representations
of a spherical-surface, 3-D chess variant. |
