Sovereign Chess will be at GATEWAY 2013

These cons are always enjoyable!  We hope to see you there!

We will have several boards set-up along with the "big board" that made multiple appearances on TBS's "nerd-off," King Of The Nerds (and you may see some cameos of the board in Season 2)!  Please come up and give us a holler - we would love to hear from you!  We have a newly modified board (it's awesome) and some updated rules to enjoy.

Details:
While the convention goes from August 30th through to September 2nd, we will only be there Friday and Sunday.

Convention is located at: 
Sheraton Gateway Los Angeles Hotel, 6101 West Century Blvd., Los Angeles, California 90045

If Tolkien knew about Sovereign Chess and THEN wrote his trilogy...

A tongue in cheek way to look at some core elements to the game.

The Fellowship of the First and Second Rings

The starting position of a Sovereign Chess board consists of two rings, so to speak. The first ring is the outermost ring (rows 1 and 16, columns a and p) - consisting of Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights and Rooks. 

The second ring (rows b2:o2 and b15:o15, columns b2:b15 and o2:o15) - consisting of 48 pawns and 4 Knights.

The fun in drawing a correlation here between Sovereign Chess and Tolkien's original work is that, in the game, every piece has the potential to work FOR you, achieving your aims. Every color has the potential to be "in fellowship" to your overall goal of winning the game. Simultaneously, there is an OPPOSING power at work (your opponent) seeking to also use these pieces to work against you (much like how Tolkien's fellowship was in tension with itself).

The Sixteen Towers

 This image is largely just making a simple play on Tolkien's "The Two Towers"- simply by counting the number of rooks on a Sovereign Chess board. But, it DOES reflect the variety of colors and opportunities that can be had at game's start!

There's also room for two observations that could be made here.

One is that ALL colors are shown. Meaning, if I am the White army, there is possibility for my controlling the Black Rooks in a game (and vice versa). Mind you, there are special criteria for this, but you won't find this in traditional chess.

The second observation is this: in Tolkien's narrative, Saruman begins by helping the Dark Lord take over Middle Earth and ultimately betrays Sauron by serving his own agenda (the "Two Towers" allied v. divergent). In Sovereign Chess, since colored pieces are not "your" pieces, but rather: pieces that serve you as long as you control them and can then be cast aside - or even "betray" you. The tension is this: do you work to save a colored piece under your control? Or seek it's capture (ala "kamikaze") for the greater good and so it might not be used against you?

The Return of the King

This last image is a lot of fun and centers around a very unique feature to Sovereign Chess: REGIME CHANGES

In Tolkien's work, "The Return of the King," there are several regime changes that might be highlighted. The Steward of Gondor is unseated. Sauron is defeated. Shadow is dispelled. 

In Sovereign Chess, the regime change illustrated in this image is that of "Coup d'Etat". Upon reaching the promotion line on a Sovereign Chess board, a player may choose to replace a pawn of their color to a King. The initial King is then immediately removed from the board.

Using Gray Matter to Clear Up Gray Areas About Gray Pieces

From the time I created Sovereign Chess, I wanted to keep the game as simple--that is, as close to traditional chess--as possible. Of course, like any chess variant, something had to be fundamentally different, and for me it was the idea of color. With pieces of different colors came squares of similar colors to control them, and those rules evolved into the chief mechanic of the game.

As I decided how to arrange the colors around the board artistically, I quickly decided that the pieces in the corners would be gray. First, they contrasted with the more colorful pieces on the sides, but second, they were much further away from the center of the board, and thus harder to develop.

One way to offset this handicap was to give the gray armies (Light-gray, or "ASH", and Dark-gray, or "SLATE") two queens each, instead of the one queen given to all other colors. This was easy to accomplish, since each gray occupied two corners, and having queens on all four corners would give the board a sense of symmetry.

After that, I placed a pawn on the square diagonal to each corner, thus creating a ring of pawns on the “second ring” of the board. While this lent its own visual appeal, it created two issues: 

First, without a special rule, it would be impossible to move a gray pawn, thus freeing the pieces behind it, unless the game had progressed so far that other colors around it had vacated neighboring squares. So, I devised a rule that a gray pawn could move diagonally one or two squares as its first move, and then orthogonally after that. Although most players saw that was a “patch” to make the grays easier to play, they accepted it, and moved on.

Second, of the two remaining squares in each corner, my desire was to represent each of the three remaining major pieces (rook, bishop and knight). My choice was to have the ASH pieces own two rooks and two bishops, while the SLATE pieces owned two rooks and two knights. This seemed to be the best way to have all of the major pieces be represented in at least one of the gray armies, but the decision led to an asymmetry in the board and, potentially, an imbalance in the gameplay.

Additionally, I created the rule of “Conversion”, where a gray piece could change color to one of the player’s pieces, depending on its movement to one of the center black or white squares. While this rule was designed to give extra incentive to bring the gray pieces out to the center, it was hard to explain, harder to actualize, and rarely ever used.

While these rules were in force for many years, the clunkiness of unusual rules and asymmetry were always gnawing at my brain (coincidentally, my “gray matter”). But recently, at a Los Angeles game convention (OrcCon 2013), an expert player and good friend made a simple suggestion that cleared up many issues.

“Lose the gray pawns,” he said. “Put knights on those squares instead. Surround each queen with a rook and bishop. That way, you can get rid of the ‘special rule’ for gray pawns, and make the game more symmetric.”

The sadness for me was breaking up the “ring of pawns” that had made up the inner loop of the board, but the benefits were worth it. I was able to lose the special rule about gray pawns. If a player controlled either gray army, she could move the knight and free up a queen in the same fashion as all of the other colors. Also, each of the gray armies now had two of each major piece.

While I was at it, I eliminated “Conversion”, without much loss (and much less rule confusion).

The result was a setup that was more natural, more symmetric, and which made the game even simpler to someone who loves traditional chess, without losing any of the key gameplay elements which make it difficult to dominate.

We have changed the rules on our website, and other sites which host information about the game (BoardGameGeek, ChessVariants, and others). We have yet to change our videos, so look for new ones in the upcoming months. 

Most of all, try the new setup and let us know what you think! We love to hear stories of how players use the gray pieces to checkmate their opponents!

Remember, show your TRUE COLORS!

Congratulations to the CROWNED King of the Nerds...

We realize that some of you may not have yet seen last night's King of the Nerds, so we won't spoil who was crowned "Sovereign" of nerd-dom. :)

Our heartiest congratulations!

Another great shot from KING OF THE NERDS