Sage Chess

Sage Chess was a chess variant that was available for online play on the website sagechess.com until the site was removed. The website called this variant the new way to play chess.

Setup

Sage Chess was played with 2 possible boards, the basic variant was played on a board of 16 by 8 and the small variant was played on one of 12 by 8. A new piece, the Sage, is added on both sides of White and Black, to the left of the leftmost rooks and the right of the rightmost rooks. An extra pawn stands in front of each Sage. In addition, 6 of the corner squares were covered in a 3-by-2 fashion in each corner in the basic variant, whereas the 2 central squares are covered on each side in the small variant.

The picture below is from a scan of the original rules given on the website:

Rules

Normal chess rules apply. The Sage (or Wizard) moves horizontally, vertically or diagonally up to 3 squares. That is, the Sage is a 3-square Queen. The files on which the Sages start on, as well as the extra files on which no pieces start on, are tinted yellow and called Sage Zones . The main function of the Sage Zones is to obstruct pieces, though more specifically Pawns, as the covered squares could not be occupied by any piece, Pawns will run the risk of running into a wall if they captured a piece and ended up in one of the Sage Zones, thus preventing them from promoting until they capture another piece that brings them back out.

Notes

There exists an opening line called The Canadian Opening , which was invented by Brian Grady. The description of the opening lines stated that it has bishops sliding immediately out into the Sage Zone and it was said to be a strategic spot for a SAGE attack. However, nothing else about the opening was stated in the rules page.

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Author: Andrew Wong.
Web page created: 2015-08-09. Web page last updated: 2015-08-09

Comments

Sage Chess. Missing description (8x16, Cells: 128)

📝Andrew Wong wrote on Sat, Aug 15, 2015 06:25 AM EDT:

Hmm it does seem pretty similar, though the covered area in Dragon Chess seem to be 3*3 whereas here it's only 3*2. Seems a bit weird that it states that the "dragon could not fly"... I wonder if Dragon chess actually copied from Sage chess since Sage chess is pretty old as well...

Franjo Dobel wrote on Thu, Aug 13, 2015 08:14 AM EDT:

This variation is introduced for some years under the name 'Dragon Chess' on DragonChess.net and, unfortunately, the board game is sold off. But one can buy a video game of 'Dragon Chess'.