Flight and Ferry

My own lack of reference to Wales was for want of an obvious piece to represent it. The Welsh flag bears a dragon, and there were two 2d pieces termed Dragon on these pages when I first encountered them. Neither appealed to me. That was, however, before Jared McComb's Ryu Shogi introduced a wider range of more specific dragons. Dragons in heraldry come in many colours - the green one of the City of London, the gold one that some say was an emblem of Wessex, and the red one of the Welsh flag. For a shade of green there is a choice of going 3d for a Jadedragon, or going hex with Chevron Ranks for an Emeralddragon, but Ryu Shogi refers directly to two of the seven heraldic colours, Gold and Silver, and indirectly to a third, red, through Copper. So the idea came to me to pit Golddragon against Copperdragon across the expanse of water into which the estuary of the Severn, the river which the Avon joins at Bristol, opens. This expanse is termed the Bristol Channel. To the south is again Somerset, historically in Wessex. To the north is Glamorgan, the part of Wales where another populous port like Bristol, the Welsh capital Cardiff, and its suburbs are located.

Well that was where the water in between came in - paradoxically making a variant with Ryu Shogi pieces more akin to Xiang Qi than to Shogi. As it was obviously more substantial than a river I decided to heavily restrict crossing from one player's half of the board to the other. In general, pieces would have to use a Ferry in the style of my Ferry Xiang Qi. It seemed sensible to lift this restriction from dragons, which can supposedly fly and are perhaps too large to fit on a ferry. It then occurred to me to extend the ability to fly to other pieces with a flying aspect to their name, including the Rook but not the Bishop.

Originally I designed this variant to be played, like my even earlier "micro-regional" Magna Carta Chess, with usual equipment if you can remember that the two armies move differently, although a pair of extra markers was still required for Ferries. The original array had Copperdragons replace Bishops on the Welsh side as Anglicans are both a minority of Welsh Christians and officially disestablished in Wales. As this preserved some long-range diagonal moves the natural way to balance this seemed to be for Golddragon to replace Rook on the Welsh side, preserving the long-range orthogonal moves. Ultimately this gave the Welsh side too great an advantage.

After Jörg Knappen pointed out the huge advantage to Wales of having Rooks when Golddragons cannot occupy Ferries, I came up with some possible ways of mitigating this problem and listed them including my preference. Meanwhile I moved the Ferries to give Wessex more of a balancing advantage and removed some ambiguities that had been pointed out. Finally (fittingly enough on Saint David's Day 2012) I decided to abandon the "usual-equipment" aspect and have the dragons on extra ranks added behind the FIDE camps - and add a sideways Rook move to the Bishops on the Welsh side to balance moves completely. The extra ranks make the Xiang Qi likeness even stronger.

Setup

Pieces

piece	on its own	on a ferry	flying reference
KING	FIDE King barred from crossing between middle two files	moves as FIDE King within middle two files (except to square with other Ferry), moves as F&F King on its own leaving Ferry behind, or stays still and sends the Ferry away	none
QUEEN	(Q) compound of Rook and F&F Bishop	compound of Rook and F&F Bishop, latter on a Ferry	one of its Okisaki Shogi names (Hisho) means Flying General
GOLDDRAGON	FIDE Rook plus F&F Bishop, barred from moving to a square with a Ferry on, or two or more squares diagonally backward	none	a dragon
COPPERDRAGON	Golddragon barred from moving two or more squares orthogonally sideways	none	a dragon
ROOK	FIDE Rook	moves as FIDE King within middle two files (except to square with other Ferry), moves as Rook on its own leaving Ferry behind, or stays still and sends the Ferry away	English name also means a bird, Shogi name (Hisha) means Flying Chariot
QUEENFILER	F&F Queen barred from moving along a file	moves as FIDE King within middle two files (except to square with other Ferry), moves as Queenfiler on its own leaving Ferry behind, or stays still and sends the Ferry away	none
BISHOP	FIDE Bishop barred from crossing between middle two files	moves as FIDE King within middle two files (except to square with other Ferry), moves as F&F Bishop on its own leaving Ferry behind, or stays still and sends the Ferry away	none
KNIGHT	FIDE Knight barred from crossing between middle two files	moves as FIDE King within middle two files (except to square with other Ferry), moves as F&F Knight on its own leaving Ferry behind, or stays still and sends the Ferry away	none
PAWN	FIDE Pawn barred from crossing between middle two files	moves as FIDE King within middle two files (except to square with other Ferry), moves as F&F Pawn on its own leaving Ferry behind, or stays still and sends the Ferry away	none

The Ferry itself is neutral and can move only under, or in place of moving, the piece sharing its square. It cannot in itself capture, but can be moved from under one piece to under another (though not a Golddragon or Copperdragon). Pieces that can move from one Ferry to the other are the King within a rank, and the Queen and Rook within a rank or file. Note that Ferries unbind Bishops, making the Wessex army all-unbound as well as the Welsh one.

Rules

The Pawn double-step initial move, En Passant, and Castling follow FIDE rules.

Three kinds of move involve a Ferry. A piece can move over, onto, or off a Ferry by its normal noncapturing or capturing move, move as a FIDE King with the middle two ranks taking the Ferry with it, or send the Ferry from under it to any other square on those ranks. The first includes usual restrictions on any other piece already occupying the Ferry, and the last two exclude a square containing a Golddragon or Copperdragon or the other Ferry. For example a Rook, or Queen moving like a Rook, can move over an empty Ferry, but not an occupied one, en route to another square. A Pawn can use a Ferry to cross either way, without restrictions as to which moves are noncapturing and which capturing.

To compensate for being unable to stop on a Ferry, the Golddragon and Copperdragon have two special ways to capture an enemy on a Ferry. A Golddragon moving along a rank, and either moving along a file, can pass through a square containing an enemy on a Ferry and capture that enemy, as long as there is no third piece anywhere along the move, including at the end. They cannot pass through such a square without capturing the enemy, or through a square containing an ally, or through a square containing a piece but no Ferry. Either piece moving diagonally forward captures any ally or enemy on a Ferry beyond its destination in the same direction. If there are two occupied Ferries in that direction only the piece on the nearer is captured.

A piece can move on a Ferry to capture the enemy kind of dragon, as the dragon will not be there at the end of the move.

An unpromoted Pawn reaching the starting square of an enemy FIDE piece of Queenfiler can optionally be promoted to a piece that the enemy has captured. An unpromoted Pawn reaching the far rank must be promoted to one of the same player's other capturable pieces, with the only restriction that no player can exceed twice the array number of any piece at any one time.

Check, Checkmate, and Stalemate are as in FIDE Chess except where other rules affect it. Thus a King might be Checkmated because of a move that it cannot make, or free of Check because of a move that an enemy piece cannot make.

Notes

I have noticed a certain similarity between this game and Jose Carrillo's Ajax Chess, specifically that pieces have a limited additional ability to move like a King. In Ajax Chess it is conditional on moving to unoccupied squares. Here, as in Ferry Xiang Qi, it is conditional on moving within the middle two ranks, with a Ferry underneath, to a square not occupied by another Ferry. The similarity was not however intended, as Ferry Xiang Qi is many years older than Ajax Chess. Other "carrying" pieces are listed at the end of my piece article Man and Beast 21: Lords High Everything-Else.