Guanaco Chess features the Guanaco, belonging to the Lama family of pieces. They jump orthogonally on every second square, but have only four capture squares.
The Guanaco jumps continuously two squares orthogonally to empty square (i.e. it slides on the same square colour). It can also step, and capture, one square orthogonally. Its value is somewhat less than a knight. A peculiarity is that jumps are allowed even if it has a capture possibility on the first square.
Extended castling: besides normal castling one can choose to move the king three squares instead of two. The rook ends up on its usual square. The corner square provides a hiding nest for the king should the player want to invoke play on the same wing and advance with the pawns. The extended castle rule also makes play on the wings easier to achieve. Queenside castle becomes more attractive. The extra corner squares will enhance the strategical possibilities. Try placing the king on the extra corner square, advance the g-pawn (or b-pawn), and follow up with rooks from behind. The king will be safe and will not stand in the way of the rooks.
Disregarding the situation on the rest of the board, this illustrates how convenient the extra corner square is when launching an attack on the wing.
The Lama pieces (Llama, Alpaca, Guanaco, and Vicuña) also appear in, Pilgrim Chess and Pioneer Chess.
• You can download my free Guanaco Chess program here (updated 2009-04-21), but you must own the software Zillions of Games to be able to run it (I recommend the download version).
• Don't miss my other chess variants.
© M. Winther, 2009 April
