This sounds......interesting.
Albeit a tad convoluted for my taste.
Bomb chess
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Also worth noting that if you try to block a check and step on a bomb, that's tough luck, your king gets taken next move.
That's a good variant! Much higher than what I initially expected. Now I need someone to play with...
What's Atomic Chess?!
Apr 2, 2015
0
#7
Whenever a piece captures, it explodes and takes out pieces adjacent to it. If the king is caught in the explosion, that side loses. You can play it on FICS.
'Minefield Chess' seems a more apt name. Main disadvantage I see is that the game seems rather boring for the bombers. And that advanced forms of cheating might be possible, signalling the location of enemy bombs by the way you hold your hands, etc.
I'd never be a bomber in such cases.
Wait. Can it be like, the players themselves place bombs?
Actually being the bomber is quite fun. It's all bluff and double-bluff. 25% chess and 75% psychology really.
As for cheating, I think that was already starting to creep in towards the end of our first session to be honest! Doesn't really matter since we we're just messing around and the rules evolved as we went. But if you were to actually try to play such a game competitively (lol), then I think you would have separate sheets of paper for both bombers, accompanied by an arbiter who could see where all the bombs are.
A lot of the strategy is interesting as well:
> Captures and exchanges are the safest moves because there cannot be a bomb there by definition
> Checks are good if they force the king to move and take his life in his hands
> You can remember which squares were occupied at the time of the last bomb reset, because you know these are safe squares
> Chucking pawns next to the opponent's king/queen hoping for an atomic bomb
> Wink-wink-nod-nod between the bomber and the player where the bomber puts an atomic bomb by the opponents king then the player steps on it intentionally
Here's a rather silly variant we've been trying out in my chess club. The rules might still need a bit of fine-tuning but here they are as they stand:
> 2 teams of 2. Each team consists of one chess player and one bomber.
> The chess players play chess, with 10 mins on the clock. Checkmate, resignation and flag fall are all valid ways to win the game, as in normal chess.
> The bombers share a piece of paper (not separate pieces due to friendly fire incidents, explained below), which is concealed from both chess players for the whole duration of the game.
> Each bomber sets two bombs on empty squares, aimed at catching out the opposing chess player: one normal bomb, which blows up any piece of either colour with steps on it, and one atomic bomb, which also eliminates all pieces of both colours on the eight surrounding squares. An atomic bomb would also set off the opponent's atomic bomb if they were next to each other when hit, causing an even bigger explosion!
> These are all noted on the paper so both bombers can see all bombs. Otherwise it would require too high a level of honesty on the behalf of a bomber to own up if his own player stepped on his bomb in a friendly-fire incident.
> For a bomb to be hit, a piece has to land on the square. Moving a rook from h1 to h4 would not set off a bomb on h3.
> If a bomb is hit, the bomber who set it must announce the hit, and the explosion takes place. He then resets it to an unoccupied square. (There is no rule against resetting a bomb to the same square, which is by definition now unoccupied). If this is on his own player's time, the clock continues running and the bomb must be reset before the player can move. If this is on the opponent's time, the clock is stopped for the bomber to reset the bomb before the game continues.
> If your king dies in an explosion, you lose. If both kings die in the same atomic bomb explosion, the game is drawn.