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,
Chess with different armies armies: the "Fabulous FIDEs", which are the standard chess pieces, the "Colorbound Clobberers", the "Nutty Knights", and the "Remarkable Rookies". All armies are designed to be equal in strength, but have significantly different properties. Kings and pawns move the same as in chess for all armies. Pawns can only promote to pieces of either army on the board at the start. Castling is done as in standard chess with the exception of the case when the rook replacement is colorbound, like in the "Colorbound Clobberers" army. In the latter case the king when castling long moves to b1 and the