A recent “Big Bang Theory” episode featured famed physicist Sheldon Cooper creating a wacky three player game of chess.
While my family has compared me to Sheldon before, this is one of the few real examples where the comparison worked. I have a 3 player chess game (hexagonal grid instead of square grid) sitting on my desk at work. It is not nearly as wacky as Sheldon’s, however I invented another chess variant (2 player) which was. The concept was a collectable trading card game based on chess. Cards would give pieces new powers.
The Siege Rook: It could move up to 8 squares without capturing, or capture a piece up to four squares away without moving.
The Lady-Killer Pawn could move up to 8 squares if it was capturing a queen.
The Samuraii Pawn: When it captures it detonates and takes out all the pieces in the adjacent squares.
The Archbiship: Like a bishop, but he imparts the ability to move as a bishop to any friendly piece he could move to.
And so on. Hopefully I will find the time to make this a real game available on http://thegamecrafter.com, a Print On Design (POD) game maker.