Four-player chess

This is a form of four handed chess on a regular 8x8 chess board called NAVA.
It is a chess variant invented in 2018 and is inspired by the ancient Chaturanga (resp. Chaturanji).
NAVA is sanskrit for new.

NAVA is meant to be a team game. Although it can also be played as everyone against everyone.
It can be played by taking two sets of regular chess pieces and one regular chess board.
Chess rules apply with the following exceptions as described here.

There are five types of pieces in NAVA. They correspond to chess pieces in almost every way.

THE KING (moves and strikes like chess king)
THE COUNSELOR (moves and strikes like chess bishop)
THE BERSERKER (moves and strikes like chess rook)
THE HORSEMAN (moves and strikes like chess knight)
THE WARRIOR (moves and strikes like chess pawn)

A king can become a sixth character namely a DIVINE WARRIOR (queen) in the game. He is still considered a king, but with special powers.
It moves and strikes as a queen in chess. For the sake of simplicity the pieces are called by their chess names in this description of the NAVA rules.

Each player takes one half of the pieces of one color of the two chess sets: the queen, the king, the rook, the knight, the bishop and four pawns.
They are to be placed in a corner as shown in the picture below.
The queen is to be placed outside the board in the corresponding corner of the armys color.

The pieces move as in chess with little exceptions.
Any piece can beat any piece. Friendly pieces can be beaten if necessary.
In teamplay treason is possible but not welcome.
There is no check in NAVA.
There is no castle in NAVA.
There is no en passant in NAVA.

Kings move and act like normal pieces.
When a king is taken his army is taken over and led by his allied king. The allied king now has a larger army but still has only one turn each round. In an everyone against everyone situation the pieces stay on the board but can't move anymore. They still can be taken.

The four players take turns clockwise.
The aim of the game is to take both kings of the two opponent teams. When both are taken, the game ends.
If there are any opposed kings left and they can't be beaten it is a draw.
Like in chess the players can surrender or declare draw at any time.
The queens are placed on the corners outside the board. So everyone sees which color the corner is, even when all the pieces are gone.

When a king arrives the square of the four middle squares which is the farest looking from his starting position, he becomes a divine warrior and changes into a queen. There are no regular queens in this game. A queen is always a transformed king.
When a king is promoted to a divine warrior the king and queen swap places. The king is now placed outside the board to mark the color of the corners army and the queen takes the kings' former place.

Pawns start in the direction they are set in the beginning. Two of each army face towards one foe, the other two towards the other foe. They cannot change direction. Once they reach the opposite edge of the board they are promoted.
Pawns promote to rook, bishop or knight once they reach the opposite last rank of the board. The player leading the army can choose to what the pawn shall be promoted. It can only be promoted to any piece that is left or available of the corresponding chess set.

That's it. Now start the battle.
Have fun and become the mightiest of kings in the four kingdoms of NAVA.

4handedchess.com