The War of the Worlds

Inspired by Edward Jackman who invented WWII Chess, opposing Shogi against FIDE Chess and called it "a really silly idea". This is an even more silly idea:

Planet Mars is populated, now that's for sure. We must conquer it, so a Human army is sent there. FIDE guys are not strong enough, then a decimal team is selected for the big pride of colonizing this new land.

This game celebrates the War Of The World, as described by H.G.Wells: it is Chess (reinforced) against Jetan, the Martian Chess according to Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The board represents the open land of Barsoom (i.e. Mars for Them). It has 10 x 10 square. One player has the 20 pieces found in Jetan. The other one has the 22 pieces used for Shako. Rules of Shako and Jetan are kept and respected as much as possible.

Shako player wins if he can checkmate either the Martian Chief or the Princess.

Jetan player wins if he can checkmate the Human King.

Remark : the Chief is a very strong piece, it is why he is assumed royal here. Even with that, the game is tough for Humans. If your invasion of Barsoom fails, you can select another army and try again.

VARIANTS

Other decimal chess games can be tried with the Zillions-Of-Games file made available :

Grand Chess versus Jetan:

Grand Chess is the invention of Christian Freeling (1984), introducing Marshall and Cardinal. It has a lot of predecessors among them is Pietro Carrera (1617) and the World Chess Champion José Raul Capablanca (1920). However, Grand Chess seems superior thanks to a clever initial arrangement

Decimal Omega versus Jetan:

Omega Chess has been invented by Daniel Mac Donald and endorsed by some American Grand Masters. The original game uses a special 10x10 board with 4 extra cases at the corner. Decimal Omega is a proposed variant by J.L.Cazaux re-arranging the setup on a regular 10x10.

Xhess versus Jetan:

Xhess has been invented in 1999 by David Howe as an example of a Large Chess Variant for the contest he organized on Hans Bodlaender's CV Pages. Although, not a competing game, it has very nice features and would have been a serious competitor.

Turkish Chess versus Jetan:

Probably more Indian than Turkish but those countries were very far for Gollon who mixed all them in his book. Anyway, it is a straight way to introduce the Amazon on the board. Probably the easiest way to colonize Mars!

Find the rules in the Chess Variant Pages

You can play War Of The World if you own Z-o-G. Download this zip-file: ww.zip.