Dragonchess is an interesting form of three-dimensional chess invented by Gary Gygax, better known as the inventor of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The game is played on three rectangular 8 x 12 boards, placed one above the other (though in practice, our group has found that it is more practical to lay them out on a large table and imagine that they are stacked vertically, due to the difficulty in reaching in under the upper boards to move pieces). The rules were first published in issue 100 of Dragon magazine, and are available online at sites such as Edward Jackman & Hans Bodlaender's Dragonchess rules page. The rules can also be downloaded from here as a Zip-compressed Word document, DCHESS.ZIP (17KB,which will unpack to a 404KB Dchess.doc file using PKunzip or Winzip).
Our overall impression of Dragonchess is that it is more dynamic than chess, with a much wider range of possible stategies open at any one time. After playing it, normal chess seems very limiting and defensive, with few opportunities to break out of your own defensive formation to attack that of the enemy. You may never be content with normal chess again!
The original Dragon article suggested using metal miniatures as pieces, but many people have pointed out the practical difficulties involved in assembling such a large number of miniatures (84 in all, of 15 different types). We found that three sets of cheap plastic chess pieces available from any games store were perfectly adequate when painted using an appropriate colour code. We coloured the bases of each piece, using blue for the upper board (representing the air), green for the middle board (the ground), brown for the lower board (underground) and silver for the pieces that could travel to and move about on any board. The pieces were assigned as follows:
* Warriors can be promoted to Heroes: painting up spare Bishops as Heroes is advisable.
One problem encountered by players of Dragonchess is the power of the Dragon, which many consider to be excessive. Our own solution to this was to increase the defensive capabilities of two of the other pieces, the Cleric and the Unicorn (note: these rule changes are not "official" in any sense, and are not used by anybody else, to my knowledge). Others have tried their own solutions: try this for an example.
"Divine Retribution" Optional Rule
This rule states that any enemy piece which takes out a Cleric is immediately removed from play (i.e. any attack on a Cleric is automatically suicidal). Only the King and the Unicorn are immune to this effect, and can attack a Cleric safely. This makes an opponent much less likely to use a powerful piece such as the Dragon or Paladin to take out the Cleric, allowing a Cleric on the upper board to provide air cover for the King.
"Unicorn Immunity" Optional Rule
This rule states that the Unicorn is immune to all special attack forms. This includes the "capture from afar" of the Dragon, the "freeze" of the Basilisk, and the "divine retribution" of the Cleric. This rule adds some colour to what would otherwise be one of the weakest pieces in the game, and greatly aids a guarded Unicorn's life expectancy in the middle region of the board.
We also made a couple of additions to the movement capabilities of certain pieces: allowing the Basilisk to make a non-capturing move one square sideways (handy when pulling it in from the flanks or steering it under an enemy), and allowing the Sylph to "wrap around" the edges of the board (i.e. moving diagonally off the left edge of the board to the next rank on the right edge, or from the eighth rank to the first), preventing it from being trapped on the eighth rank.
Brentanus Two-Pronged Chess
This variant was suggested by John Whelan:
After the first player's first move, each player makes 2 moves per turn with separate pieces (eliminating first-move advantage by having each player finish a move ahead).
Conceptually, the 2 moves can be treated as though they occurred simultaneously. Each of the two moves must be moves that would have been possible even if the the other move had not yet been made. In other words, start squares of both pieces are still considered occupied... you cannot move a first piece out of the way to free up a second piece to move past.
Conversely, destination squares are not considered occupied until both moves are done, so a piece is not blocked by a square that is the destination square of the other move.
The extra move is optional, not mandatory. Therefore, rules of stalemate apply only when no legal moves are possible on a turn.
Rules of "check" and "checkmate" apply here, but to the turn as a whole, rather than to individual moves. Thus, a King is considered to be in check if he is still threatened after both moves are completed. For instance, it would be legal to move a king into what would be considered "check" in a normal game, provided that a second move blocks the check.
Having tested this in a game via email, it does seem to overcome a weakness of Dragonchess, the frustration of being able to move only one piece at a time when there are so many available. It also means that some of the slower pieces (like those on the lower board) get used more, in a game usually dominated by highly mobile pieces like the Dragon and Paladin.
Another of John's ideas is the "Rubix Cleric" (after the famous cube puzzle) because it allows the Cleric to control a 3x3x3 cube. In other words, the Cleric is not limited to moving directly up or down when changing boards, but can move to any square in the 3x3 grid surrounding the square directly above or below it. This gives the Cleric a degree of inter-board mobility comparable to the Paladin: though slower, it would still be very useful as a mobile shield for the King, or as an offensive piece capable of slipping through gaps in the opponent's defences.