Description

Castle Strife Games is a collection of 4 chess variants that also includes traditional chess (on the back of the quad-fold board). The Castle Strife Games website, CastleStrife.com, includes a full description and rules for all 4 variants: (traditional chess is Level 1), Castle Siege Chess (Level 2), Castle Action Chess (Level 3), Castle Attack Chess (Level 4), and the team game Castle Challenge Chess (Level 5). The games are for sale on Etsy.com. More information, including how to play, is on CastleStrife.com. Pictures of VCU students playing the games at the Chess Club at VCU can be seen at the Castle Chess Club meetup site.

Castle Siege Chess has been programmed in Zillions of Games and can be played on a registered copy of Zillions of Games 2.0 or higher (maybe even 1.0). The latest version of the electronic game can be downloaded from my website CastleStrife.com. Click Castle Siege Chess on the home page and then click the Computer Games button in the header menu. The download links are in the middle of the page. You can then play the game either against the computer or another person by simply double-clicking the .zrf file for either the 590 pixel version for laptops or the 800 pixel one for larger monitors. It can even be played online through Zillions of Games.

The circular chess board is actually a circular board merged with a square board in its center. Byzantine Chess (aka Circular Chess) is played on a 4 track circular board with a hole in the center. It has 2 directions of attack on the opponent's starting position. I (Rich VanDeventer, inventor, designer, developer, and publisher of Castle Strife Games) decided to merge a 6x6 square chess board into the hole and morph it into the inner ring of the circular board so that all chess paths progressed smoothly from the square area into the circular area. I ended up with 3 circular paths, 1 transition circular path, and a 4x4 square center and I named the board CirSquare 96 (it has 96 spaces). In merging a square with a circle, I could not avoid having 4 triangular spaces in the transition circle. Those 4 triangular spaces have turned out to be one of the main advantages of the board. Not only does the CirSquare 96 chess board have 3 directions (front and two sides) of attack (versus a traditional chess board's 1 direction of attack--frontal only) on the opponent's castle (starting area), but the 4 triangles provide a way for the Queen, Rook, and Bishop to gain a 5th direction of coverage when their paths pass through a triangular space, because they can exit either of the other two corners or sides (depending on how they entered the triangular space).

The CirSquare 96 is exactly 50% larger than an 8x8 chess board. If all 24 spaces in each castle are used for pieces, it has exactly 50% more pieces than traditional chess. So the ratio of starting pieces to open spaces in the battlefield (the 4 rows of spaces between the castles) is 1:1, which is the same as traditional chess, so the board has the same feeling of openness at the beginning of the game.

All the traditional chess pieces move the same as they do in traditional chess. You can also castle, if you use the standard setup for the traditional chess pieces. Since the board is 12 squares wide across the battlefield, there are 12 Pawns, which of course is 4 more than traditional chess. If you use only the standard 8 pieces of a traditional chess set that are not Pawns, there will be 4 spaces in the back of the castle that are open. That is how I initially played the game. It played very well, but felt too much like traditional chess. So I decided to come up with pieces to fill those 4 spaces. First, I used 2 more Knights and 2 more Bishops. That provided very strong armies, but it was not different enough for me. So started a search for medieval warriors that the traditional chess set was missing.

I began looking at medieval war paintings and soon realized that the main things missing were Archers and Catapults. So I put 2 Archers and 2 Catapults in the back of the castles. I made their moves compliment the Knights, Bishops, and Rooks. The Archer became a short-range Bishop that can jump and the Catapult became a short-range Rook that can jump. They have worked out to be outstanding additions to the traditional chess set. Almost everyone who has played Castle Siege Chess at least 3 times has ended up either liking it or loving it. I started a chess club at VCU in Richmond, VA almost 3 years ago and introduced my games to the members. Some of the traditional chess purists did not want to play them, but many of the very good chess players and a lot of the average players played Castle Siege Chess fairly often. Several of the club members switched to playing only Castle Siege Chess, although that was not my intention because I love both traditional chess and my games. Much like Bobby Fischer liked both traditional chess and chess variants.

A few years later, I decided to try to make Castle Siege Chess more like conducting a real medieval war on a chess board. I added Action cards to Castle Siege Chess to get Castle Action Chess. The Action cards are mainly used to give special moves to pieces that they normally could not perform. That eventually worked out quite well, but there was still a lot of aspects of medieval war action were missing.

So I began thinking about what else was missing. What about weapons? So I added weapons to Castle Action Chess and got Castle Attack Chess. Weapons allow your pieces to capture opponent's pieces without having to move your piece--the weapon makes the move. That soon began working very well, and was quite popular among several of the chess club members. But there was still a lot of medieval war activity that was missing.

Then I started really thinking hard about what else was missing. I came up with: money to buy weapons and captured pieces; reinforcements; a dungeon and oubliette for captured pieces; challenges between pieces; and, a team of players (General, Commander, and Finance Officer) for each side. To make it all work, I added aspects of other board games: dice, action cards, power cards, and time cards. I also came up with Catastrophe cards. I added more weapons--both offensive weapons for the pieces and defensive & offensive weapons for the board. It took several years of play testing to work out the kinks, but the game is now quite perfected. And it is a blast to play once all the players have played it at least 3 times so they know it quite well.

Besides CastleStrife.com, you can also go to my meetup site--Castle Chess Club meetup--to see hundreds of pictures of the Chess Club at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) in action playing both traditional chess and my Castle Strife Games (mainly Castle Siege Chess). We even had several Castle Siege Chess tournaments. My games are for sale on Etsy.com, just use the Etsy search field to find Castle Siege Chess. Links to all my games are on each listing. I hope that you will check them out.

Sorry for the long description.