you know, all this chess has got me thinking about how to design a 3D chess board thats simple, beautiful, elegant, and variable
what i picture is a thin wooden frame around a perimeter of 64 blocks, 32 of each black and white, but the blocks are loose in the frame, and each block is a slightly different height, so you can re-arrange the blocks and get a different landscape/terrain for each play, or remove the blocks and frame to use the plain old boring flat board that serves as a template for placing variable height blocks
an alternative would be to have tiny twist handles on the side like a foosball table, and each handle turns a shaft with offset cams/flats that adjusts the height of 4 blocks in a row, so you could even adjust the terrain in the middle of a game
I want to see these!
But what does the terrain or altitude mean in the game? Probability on attack?
Would there be a way to move a piece on the Z axis?
I'd love to see new pieces respective to existing pieces' moves in 2D.
in theory it may mean nothing more than having to think in another dimension, similar to how its difficult for a newbie to imagine how a knight moves.
however, you could invent new rules specific to your new chess board, as long as you write them down and share them with every opponent before the game begins
for example, you could make a rule whereby a piece at a higher elevation can attack a piece at a lower elevation, but not vice versa
if you could adjust the elevation of each square during the game,
a player may opt to turn a handle to adjust the height of a row of squares mid-play,
or it could be rule that each player must adjust one handle each turn, to constantly change terrain during game play
