Spherical Chess 324

Capture your opponent's last queen to win.

4 variants (4 2-D perspectives of a spherical, 3-D game):

white whole | black quartered (shown below)

black whole | white quartered

white halved N & S | black halved E & W

black halved N & S | white halved E & W

A draw is impossible.

Each player begins the game with 8 queens.

Once the last queen of either player has been captured, the game will end immediately.

The pendulum-move rule applies which dictates double-moves alternating between the two players throughout the game except for the very first move which is only a single-move by white.

All available 4-, 5-, 6-, 7- directional moving pieces can be half-promoted into pieces with 1 additional direction of movement at the cost of 3 moves.

All available 4- & 6- directional moving pieces can be single-promoted into pieces with 2 additional directions of movement at the cost of 4 moves.

All rooks (4-directional moving pieces) can be double-promoted into queens with 4 additional directions of movement at the cost of 6 moves.

All pieces capable of movement can capture by replacement any enemy or neutral pieces.

Portals connect opposite edges along all 8 geometrically-contiguous directions of linear movement possible within the square-spaced, flat 2-D gameboard.

Consequently, 8 directions of movement are available from every square-space within the flat 2-D gameboard.

Essentially, this is a spherical surface, 3-D chess variant that can be represented accurately and played well using as few or as many of the 4 available, congruent opening setups as desirable within the flat 2-D gameboard due to its exclusive usage of 2-D pieces.

This means that an entire game played via any 1 given opening setup can be completed transposed, move-by-move, into entire games played via all of the other congruent opening setups.

Notably, the naive appearance of geometrical asymmetry in 2-D between the two armies with any given opening setup is totally illusionary.

When the fact that the 2-D gameboard has no real edges in any way (i.e., continuous space), despite its flat 2-D representation to the contrary, is taken into account, the positions and available moves for all of the 2-D pieces of the white army, relative to everything (friendly pieces, neutral pieces, enemy pieces and empty spaces), are mirror-image symmetrical to those of the black army.