Chess with different armies This army includes a lot of leapers, but most of them have asymmetrical move patterns, with backward moves being restricted. The rooks, knights, bishops, and queen are replaced by the following pieces: The four armies described above were playtested by Ralph Betza and selected as the most balanced ones. There are other armies, invented by Betza and other people, some of which are presented here. In the initial version of the game there were 8 armies and in these armies the king moved differently from the king in the standard chess. Instead of normal pawns, fairy pawns could be selected,
Chaturaji chess-like games where it is the elephant that normally corresponds to the chess bishop. Player turns pass clockwise around the board. The pawn also moves as in chess, but does not have the option of an initial double-step move. Each of the four players' pawns moves and captures in a different direction along the board, as implied by the initial setup. For example, the red pawns which start on the g-file move left across the board, promoting on the a-file. Also, pawn promotion rules are different: one must promote to the piece that starts on the same (or ) of