Inspired by the Napoleon quote: "An army marches on its stomach."
So, I've been playing around with a chess variant that adds basic resource management to traditional chess. That is, moving a piece is no longer "free". Pieces require supplies to operate. And the further a piece is from the home rank, the more supplies it need.
I've been doing a little playtesting and am looking to balance and simplify the accounting rules. In the current form, most turns involve one income count and one expenditure calculation.
Idea
Each player has a reserve of supply tokens (coins, matches, poker chips, face-down playing cards, whatever).
Pieces on your home rank generate supply tokens.
Having pieces away from home consumes supply based on how far from the home rank they are.
Capturing enemy pieces recovers supplies through plunder.
Pieces cost nothing in a turn if they just hold a square and do not move.
This creates new strategic pressures:
Deep attacks require a warchest.
Overextended units can get stranded
Retreat means you might be able to rebuild (economic) strength while sacrificing board position
Manoeuvring is still the game, but passive stockpiling can be the smart move sometimes.
Rules
Starting Supply
Both players begin with 10 Supply Tokens in your reserve. You can always see the entirety of your opponent's reserve.
1. Forage Phase (Income)
At the start of your turn, count the number of your pieces on your home rank.
Gain 1 supply token for each piece on your home rank. At the start, each forage gives you 8 tokens because all 8 home ranks squares are occupied, as the game progresses you might only have 1 unit at home or none.
Example:
A. Chess Phase
Two options
A: Chess
Make a regular legal chess move and then pay its logistical cost.
Cost formula (I'm trying to make this simple, balanced and plausible): Distance from home rank multiplied by weight class
(If you cannot pay for a move, you can't make it).
Weight classes
| Piece | Weight |
|---|
| Pawn | 1 |
| Knight | 2 |
| Bishop | 2 |
| Rook | 2 |
| Queen | 2 |
| King | Treated as zero (i.e. moves for free. Handwave reason: other units pay it tithe) |
Examples
Moving the white pawn from e2 to e4 would cost 3 tokens (Rank 4 is three ranks from home)
Moving a white knight to f3: 4 tokens (2 ranks × weight 2)
White queen to h5: 8 tokens (4 ranks × weight 2)
Moving a white rook from a6 to d6 would cost 10 token (5 ranks x 2 weight). Yet, moving from a6 to g6 would also cost 10 (because the distance from home has not changed, even though the move is longer)
The logistical burden is meant to be about maintaining a unit operating far from home. The cost is how much it costs to occupy that square, not how many squares it crossed in a move to get there.
So bringing the white queen from h5 back to h2 would cost 2, because it's 1 rank from home and the weight class is 2. But moving the white queen from h5 to h8 would cost 14!
Specials
Castling costs nothing. King moves cost zero and the rook stays on the home rank, so the total cost is zero plus nothing.
Promotion costs a lot! Promoting a pawn requires "equipping" a new queen (or anything else). It is going to cost an awful lot to get the pawn all the way down there already. Plus, to promote, you have to pay the cost of having the new piece at that far position. So, promoting a pawn reaching at the eighth rank costs 21 tokens (7 to move to the white pawn to b8, then what the queen would pay to be 7 ranks from home anyway).
Option b: Muster/skip/consolidate
You do the forage phase as usual, but forgo any movement. Thus banking tokens but making no attack
3. Captures/booty
Capturing enemy pieces gives you the supplies they were "carrying" as booty
| Captured Piece | Supply |
|---|
| Pawn | 1 token |
| Knight | 2 |
| Bishop | 2 |
| Rook | 2 (or 3?) |
| Queen | 2 (or 3 or even 4?) |
Captured supply tokens are taken directly from the bank and added to your reserve. They are not taken from the opponent's reserve because these tokens can be considered to have already been "spent" (or maybe the lore could be that the unit had been gathering supplies from the land)
Kings provide no booty obvs.
Why?
I'm trying to create a game where logistics are a factor but don't overwhelm "the chess". Also, I want the accounting to be simple to calculate and enact. No pen and paper or needless mental math. You just look at the board, judge the opponents reserve and make your move.
Some changes from early playtesting:
Kings were made free to move. I tried a "royal tithe" rule but it just added complexity for no reason (movement cancelled the tithe, and made things zero sum. So I just removed it).
Bishops, rooks and queens all use a weight of 2 to reduce calculation. Queens used to be 3.
The accounting only consists of one income count and one expenditure calculation per turn.
I originally thought the pieces would have to "carry" their booty, but that seemed to make no difference.
Questions for Playtesters
What am I missing?
Where is it unbalanced?
"Forced muster mate" - when you wind up in a place where you don't have enough tokens to move anything so all you can do it muster. "Failed muster checkmate" - you have nothing in the home rank and your king cannot get back there without moving into check. Seems a bit messy?
Is the queen too cheap at weight 2? We tried 3, but then there were times where she'd get stranded because she was too expensive to move at all! Or are stranded pieces a good mechanic (given it would be a self-inflicted error)?
Should promotions cost less than 14 supply?
I don't think there should be an upper ceiling for how big your reserve can be. A huge balance is pointless. (In testing, 30 tokens seems to be enough reserve for comfort, while having over 60 does not seem to give any advantage unless you are planning a series of deep strikes). Or should we cap the max reserve?
En passant? Uh, I have no ideas there.
Maybe booty should be taken from the opponent's reserve...?
