Spookyhouse Chess

Introduction Spookyhouse is a dropchess variant on a 10x10 board. It takes influence from several other variants, but most significantly Xhess. I highly encourage anyone who is interested in this variant to also check out Xhess, since it's a very obscure variant but nonetheless totally fascinating in my opinion~! Spookyhouse's board setup is what I view to be an "improved" version of Xhess', and it shares most of the same pieces (albeit with some very significant differences). Seriously, check out Xhess!



Other influences include Shogi, Chess 2: The Sequel, and of course Crazyhouse.

Setup External image links detected! You know what would look worse on your page than this big, ugly warning? Broken image links. If you're the author, please make sure that doesn't happen to this page by replacing the following external graphic images with local copies. Array ( [0] => https://i.imgur.com/Tg1RtiG.png ) Tentative board graphic created using musketeerchess.net's Board Painter tool.



This diagram shows one of 720 possible starting positions. Witches are always placed as shown, but the other pieces are randomized as follows: A Knight, Bishop, Phoenix, and King are placed randomly in any of the following six squares (circled in red in the diagram): c1, c2, d1, d2, e1, and e2.

The Rook and Cannon are placed randomly on a1 and b2 (circled in pink in the diagram).

Kingside and "Queenside" are mirrored, with the Ghost being opposite the King.

The white and black pieces are mirrored.

6x5x4x3x2 = 720 positions.

Pieces External image links detected! You know what would look worse on your page than this big, ugly warning? Broken image links. If you're the author, please make sure that doesn't happen to this page by replacing the following external graphic images with local copies. Array ( [0] => https://i.imgur.com/iqFVHn4.png [1] => https://i.imgur.com/7e5VnWt.png [2] => https://i.imgur.com/uumJSol.png [3] => https://i.imgur.com/kzZAJXw.png [4] => https://i.imgur.com/PDeHQPe.png [5] => https://i.imgur.com/bhUA7Lf.png [6] => https://i.imgur.com/YEf6MoW.png [7] => https://i.imgur.com/SInTZnz.png ) 10 Witches (Xhess) - Known as Horsemen in Xhess, they move and capture as orthodox pawns (but without the ability to move two squares forward for their first move), and also move (but do not capture) as Xiangqi Horses, but only forward (a Xiangqi horse moves as a knight, but without jumping; instead, it slides one square orthogonally and then one square diagonally). If they reach the back rank, they Promote to any piece of the player's choosing other than a King or Ghost.



2 Knights



2 Bishops



2 Phoenixes (Chuu Shogi) - Jump exactly 2 spaces diagonally, or slide one space orthogonally.



2 Cannons (Xiangqi) - Move as a rook, and capture as a rook only if they first jump over exactly one piece in the process.



2 Rooks



1 Ghost (Chess 2: The Sequel) - Moves by teleporting to any open square on the board. Cannot capture, cannot be captured. 1 King

Rules Follows the rules of Chess, with these changes:



Drop Rules

As in Crazyhouse and Shogi, when you capture an opponent's piece, it goes into your Pocket. You may later Drop that piece on any open square for your turn, instead of moving a piece. Witches have two limitations: they cannot be dropped on the first or last rank, or on any file that is already occupied by a Witch of the same color.



Miscellaneous

If you capture a piece that was promoted from a Witch, it goes back to being a Witch.

There is no castling, no en passant, and if you get stalemated you lose.



Notes The pieces are basically a team of all my favorites. The Phoenix is an exception; with that I just needed a jumping piece with roughly the same strength as a Knight, so I 'made it up' and then correctly guessed that it was already in one of the large Shogi variants! Out of all of these I think the Ghost is the biggest game-changer. It's certainly a game-changer in Chess 2; that game has two of them, and they basically completely take over. The lack of queen, larger board, defensive abilities of the Ghost, and restrictions on Witch drops make it so this game will probably be less forcing and aggressive than Crazyhouse, which I would view as being a positive.



My goals with the randomized initial positions were to preserve symmetry and avoid overly forcing initial positions. I think a previous version of Spookyhouse allowed the rooks to be placed on a bunch of possible starting squares and it of course caused problems. I know random starting positions are controversial and can be a matter of taste, but I'm a big fan of what they bring to the table.



My hope is to one day have a live online playable version of this, with timers and rankings and so on. Of course that's completely beyond me to accomplish at the moment! I hope people enjoy it regardless~