Wildebeest chess is a chess variant created by R. Wayne Schmittberger in 1987. The Wildebeest board is 11×10 squares. Besides the standard chess pieces, each side has two camels and one "wildebeest" - a piece which may move as either a camel or a knight.
The inventor's intent was "to balance the number of 'riders'—pieces that move along open lines—with the number of 'leapers'—pieces that jump". (So for each side, two knights, two camels, and a wildebeest balance two rooks, two bishops, and a queen.)
The game was played regularly in the (now defunct) correspondence game club NOST.
Pieces and pawns move and capture the same as they do in standard chess, except for two new pieces, and the pawn's ability to advance to the players' fifth in a single move from either their second or third ranks. Wildebeest chess differs from the standard game in that a win can be achieved either by checkmate or stalemate. In both cases the losing side has no legal moves.
The camel is a (1,3)-leaper fairy chess piece. It moves and captures like an elongated move of a chess knight – jumping in a 2×4 (squares) rectangular pattern over any intervening men. Each camel is thus limited to squares of one color.
The wildebeest moves and captures as a camel and a chess knight.
Normal conventions apply when castling, with the only difference that the castling player can choose to slide his king,,, or squares. As in chess, the castling rook finishes on the opposite side of the king on the square adjacent.
C for camel, W for wildebeest.
1. Wf4 f6?? 2. Wg7#
Both Wildebeest chess and Omega chess add two new pieces to equalize the number of jumping pieces (leapers) with sliding pieces (riders), and each have one that is color-bound (camel and wizard, respectively) and the other is not (wildebeest and champion, respectively), and the pawn can move up to 3 squares in its first move in both of these two games, but they have many different rules:
| rule | Wildebeest chess | Omega chess | |
|---|---|---|---|
| board | 11*10 (totally 110 squares) | 10*10 with 4 extra squares (totally 104 squares) | |
| stalemate | win | draw | |
| second move of a pawn | can move up to 2 squares if the first move only move 1 square | can only move 1 square even if the first move only move 1 square | |
| pawn promotion | can only promote to queen or wildebeest | can promote to every piece except king | |
| castling | king can move 1 to 4 squares | king can only move 2 squares |
Bibliography
. David Pritchard (chess player) . The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants . Games & Puzzles Publications . 1994 . Wildebeest Chess . 0-9524142-0-1.
. David Pritchard (chess player) . Beasley . John . The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants . John Beasley . 2007 . Wildebeest Chess . 978-0-9555168-0-1.