The parent game of King's Colour is Chad. There once existed hexagonal variants of most of my chess variants, including HexChad. At some point I trashed them all because I feel the hex grid and chess don't merge very well, but King's Colour is an exception. It's also not to be taken seriously.

Play King's Colour interactively or against AI

Material
The game starts with the initial position as displayed below. Each king has eight pieces surrounding him in a 3x3 castle that is surrounded by a wall of fourteen cells.

Movement The king is confined to his 3x3 castle. He can move one step in any cardinal direction, one step diagonally, or one step using the knight's move (which is the jump from a sharp corner to an opposite side or vice versa). The rook moves any unobstructed distance in any cardinal direction, unhindered by cells of the walls. The bishop moves any unobstructed distance in any diagonal direction, unhindered by cells of the walls. It always is bound to the checkered sub-grid it moves on. The queen moves any unobstructed distance in any cardinal or diagonal direction, unhindered by cells of the walls. A piece becomes a queen the very moment it ends its move inside the opponent's castle.

Check and capture
White moves first, after which turns alternate. Pieces may give check from any distance. However, mutual capture between pieces is restricted to a specific situation. In all other situations pieces simply block each other.

• The right to mutual capture exists, and only exists, between an attacking piece on the opponent's wall and a defending piece inside the castle.

The rest is all chess, really. The king must evade check by moving or interposing a piece or capturing the attacking piece, whatever is possible or applicable. But there is one rule left, one that defines the game. The board is checkered in three differen shades, the sub-grids that the bishops are bound to. You will notice in the diagram that the king and the rooks are on the same sub-grid. That is not accidentally so.

The great switcheroo

• Queens are permanent but unpromoted pieces that are on the same sub-grid as the king are always rooks, all other unpromoted pieces are always bishops. If the king moves to a different sub-grid, all rooks instantly become bishops and the bishops that were on the sub-grid that the king has moved to, now are rooks. If a rook moves to a different sub-grid it instantly becomes a bishop. The great switcheroo!
  

How I invented ... King's Colour


King's Colour © MindSports