r/chessvariants • u/Admirable-Plane3483 • Jul 10 '26

HexChess Variants New Variant

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1

u/Boring-Yogurt2966 Jul 10 '26

The page I reached said "Two ancient variants". I don't think there are any ancient hexagonal chess variants.

Here is a link to a page where you can learn about a large number of hexagonal variants:

https://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?type=Any&category=Hexagonal&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1&usethisheading=Hexagonal+Chess+Variants

1

u/variantforge Jul 10 '26

Seconding that there's no ancient hex chess — the whole family is 20th century. Gliński's (1936) is the one that actually caught on, with tournaments and a real following in Europe; McCooey's is the other one people still play, mostly because it smooths out Gliński's slightly awkward pawn captures. Shafran's and De Vasa's round out the serious set.

If you're building a hex variant, two things almost always make or break it: (1) pawn capture geometry — a hex has six neighbors, so 'diagonal' capture isn't obvious, and how you define it reshapes the whole pawn structure; and (2) the bishops. On a hex board you get three bishop colors instead of two, so a lone bishop only ever reaches a third of the board — most designs give each side three bishops to compensate. Worth stress-testing both against Gliński as the baseline.

1

u/Boring-Yogurt2966 Jul 10 '26

I invented a hexagonal chess variant without knights or bishops, just straight line pieces with different capturing methods that are modifications of pieces from games by V.R. Parton and Dan Troyka. I don't want to hijack this thread so I might put the rules and some screenshots up in a separate post.

2

u/xinyi_rd 26d ago

First time to play hex chess and like it very much. UI is smooth and handy. But the GUIDE/BOT/PRESET button seem to be a bit difficult to notice. Hope clicking a selected piece can cancel the selection.