Chess Variants/Wildebeest Chess

Starting position of wildebeest chess. The camels are represented by horizontal knights and the wildebeest by upside-down knights.

Introduction

Wildebeest Chess is a large variant played on an 11 by 10 board.

History

Wildebeest chess was created in 1987 by the editor of Gmaes magazine, R. Wayne Schmittberger. His intent was to balance the number of jumping pieces with the number of sliding pieces - in this variant the knights and the two new pieces balance out the rooks, bishops and queen.

The variant was played regularly in the now-defunct correspondance club Knights of the Square Table.

Rules

Wildebeest chess adds two new knight-like pieces: the camel and the wildebeest.

• The camel moves like an exaggerated knight - it first moves three squares forward, backward or sideways followed by another square at a 90º angle.
• The wildebeest combines the moves of the knight and the camel.

The standard chess pieces all retain their normal moves, with the exception of the pawns:

• When a pawn has not yet moved, it has the option of moving between one and three squares forward.
• Once a pawn has moved one square, it may move one or two squares forward.
• A pawn that has moved two or more squares forward may only advance one square at a time.
• A pawn may be captured en passant if, when moving forward more than one square, an enemy pawn could move diagonally onto a square it passed over.
• A pawn may only promote to a queen or wildebeest.

When the king castles, he may move between one and four squares towards the rook, and the rook moves to the square on the opposite side of where the king ended.

Sub-variants

This chess variant does not have any notable sub-variants.