MAHARAJAH - A new chess variant developed by Oleksandr Velykotskyi

[maksimKorzh]

Hello everyone, I'd like to share an interesting chess variant project called MAHARAJAH.
It has been developed by my friend Oleksandr Velykotskyi.
Here's the project website: https://maharajah.one/
Here're detailed rules here: https://maharajah.one/rules.html

From Oleksandr's game concept materials:

MAHARAJAH — WHAT DIFFERS FROM CLASSIC CHESS

Everything not listed here is ordinary chess: the 8x8 board, the movement and
capture of the orthodox pieces, check, checkmate, stalemate, en passant,
promotion on the last rank, the draw rules, and the clock.

There are exactly two changes: three extra pieces, and a starting position the
players build themselves. Everything below follows from those two.


1. THREE EXTRA PIECES

- Maharajah (M) moves as queen + knight
- Chancellor (C) moves as rook + knight
- Archbishop (A) moves as bishop + knight

Each is the plain union of its two components: it slides like its sliding half,
leaps like a knight, and captures the same way it moves. No other special
powers - not royal, no double moves, no restricted squares.


2. THE STARTING POSITION IS BUILT, NOT GIVEN

Before the game each side assembles its own army:

- exactly 39 points, spent on anything (pawn 1, knight/bishop 3, rook 5,
archbishop 6, chancellor 8, queen 9, Maharajah 13)
- the king is free, mandatory and fixed on e1 / e8
- own half only: White on ranks 1-4, Black on ranks 5-8
- ranks are filled from home outward, without gaps - no piece on a farther rank
while an earlier one still has an empty square
- at most 31 pieces, because the half has 32 squares and the king holds one

39 points is exactly the cost of the orthodox army, so the standard chess setup
is a legal army, and every other army is priced against it. Any number of copies
of a piece is allowed within the budget and the space.

A position cannot start if either side is off-budget or misplaced, if the side
to move is already in check, or if it has no legal move.


3. THE TWO ARMIES ARE CHOSEN BLIND

In play across two devices, each player builds their army privately; the
opponent's half stays hidden until both sides lock in, and only then is the full
board revealed. Neither army can be tailored to the other.


4. EACH SIDE IS "CLASSIC" OR "VARIANT" - SEPARATELY

A player's status is decided once, from their own starting position, and never
changes: orthodox array = classic, anything else = variant. The two sides are
judged independently, so one player may play classic while the other plays the
variant in the same game.

The status controls three things:

- Castling: classic side only, under the normal chess conditions. A variant side
never castles - with an arbitrary army there is no "corner rook".
- Promotion: a classic side promotes to queen, rook, bishop or knight; a variant
side may also promote to Maharajah, Chancellor or Archbishop.
- The pawn double-step: see below.


5. THE PAWN DOUBLE-STEP IS RELAXED IN "WHERE", NOT IN "HOW OFTEN"

A variant side's pawn may advance two squares from whatever square it started
the game on, whichever rank that is - because a custom army can start with pawns
anywhere on its half. It still gets this only once, as its own first move, with
both squares ahead empty. A classic side keeps the ordinary rank-2 / rank-7
restriction. En passant then works exactly as in chess.


THE WHOLE DIFFERENCE IN SEVEN LINES

1. Three extra pieces: Maharajah (Q+N), Chancellor (R+N), Archbishop (B+N).
2. Players build their own starting armies for 39 points each, king fixed and
free on e1 / e8.
3. Armies go on the own half only, ranks filled from home outward without gaps,
at most 31 pieces.
4. Across two devices the armies are built secretly and revealed simultaneously.
5. Each side counts as classic or variant by its own starting array, for the
whole game.
6. A variant side never castles and may promote to the compound pieces; a
classic side castles normally and promotes only to the orthodox four.
7. A variant pawn's single double-step may start from any square it began on.