Fairy Eater Chess

With the New Year approaching, we increasingly feel the mystery of the upcoming event.
We are all waiting for a miracle these days, and miracles sometimes happen. You just need to believe in them and look to the future with optimism.

In these amazing days of a winter fairy tale, I decided to go straight to the world of fairy chess. I wanted to create a complex battle of fairy pieces on the board, a whole world inhabited by a variety of fantasy creatures. I must say right away that the idea was a success and after several tests the game burst out with incredibly rich and mesmerizing colors, plunging me into the utopian world of magic and wizardry.

In the world that I have created, fairy chess pieces are destroying each other with monstrous speed and appetite. That is why this chess variant has such a name.

The game uses a 9x9 board.
Each player has 36 pieces at his / her disposal:

1 Sorcerer (King)

4 Ghosts

4 Shields

6 Nightriders

6 Twilight Reapers (Marshal or Chancellor - knight + rook)

6 Sowers of Chaos (Archbishop - horse + bishop)

9 Pawns

The names of the pieces in Fairy Eater Chess differ from the classic names of fairy chess pieces, although the movement and capture are completely preserved in the original.

Move of the Fairy Eater Chess pieces.

Pawn - moves one square forward and captures as in ordinary chess.

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The Sower of Chaos is also known as an Archbishop in Capablanca chess, combines the moves of a knight and a bishop.

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The Twilight Reaper is a Chancellor in Capablanca chess, combines the moves of a knight and a rook.

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The Shield - an analogue of a Side Mover in Chu Shogi - moves and captures one square forward and backward, and also moves and captures orthogonally like a rook in chess.

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The Ghost - moves in all directions like a Queen, but only by jumping over the square. Can jump over friendly and hostile pieces. A Ghost standing on a white square moves only along white squares, a black-squared Ghost - along black ones.

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The Nightrider - a fairy chess piece invented by the father of fairy chess, the brilliant chess composer T.R. Dawson in 1925 - makes any number of knight moves in one direction, without deviating from the trajectory.

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The Sorcerer - aka the King - walks as befits a king in ordinary chess.

Pawn promotion zone.

The pawn transforms into any piece except The Sorcerer (King) and itself, reaching the sixth rank for White and the fourth rank for Black. Thus, it only needs to take two steps to transform.

Win and Draw.

If the player to move has their Sorcerer (King) under attack and is unable to make a move so that it is no longer under attack then the player loses via Checkmate.

A draw is awarded:
- by mutual agreement
- in the case of a three-fold repetition of the position
- in the absence of capture and movement of the Pawn in the last 50 moves (rule of 50 moves)
- if one of the players cannot make a move according to the rules in turn (stalemate).

White is the first to start the game.

The line of contact of the two armies is as close as possible, and this leaves no room for maneuver at the initial stage, which, in fact, is a close combat - a battle of two Sorcerers, throwing spells and enchantments at each other.

Therefore, the game, as a rule, begins with exchanges and building the pattern of his position that is beneficial to the player.

The advantage of the first move has been leveled to zero. It practically does not exist, since the value of the pawn is very high, given that it only needs to make two moves to promote.

What makes Fairy Eater Chess different from other variants of fairy chess and why is it worth trying to play Fairy Eater?
Firstly, it is an insanely interesting and dynamic variant of fairy chess - the rapid development of events with a kaleidoscopic increase in the calculation of the game complexity strikingly sets it apart from the background of other chess worlds inhabited by fairy characters.

Perhaps 'Swiftness' or 'Burst' are the words that can briefly and clearly characterize my fairy chess variant. This is all the more surprising since at the beginning of the game the board is 89% filled with pieces.

Secondly, the perfect balance of all fairy pieces. In what other variant will you find 12 Nightriders practically not affecting not only each other, but also other pieces at the beginning of the game?
Well, and among other things, where else will you encounter such a paradox - the number of combinations in the game increases as the number of pieces on the board DECREASES (up to a certain point, of course)!

Now you can play Fairy Eater Chess Live and Daily here https://games.dtco.ru/map 

Registration is simple and does not require email. Just join and play!

Special thanks to Valentin Chelnokov!

Or you can try playing the Fairy Eater Chess here >>> https://www.omnichess.club/variant/b69f811c-d68c-4e10-ae25-387651e484fc

AI play very weak, but in order to understand the game they are perfect.

Keep in mind that Nightrider is depicted a little differently on omnichess than we are used to.

Here is the official blog of the game where I post Fairy Eater Chess puzzles and problems https://fairyeaterchess.blogspot.com/

Thank you!