Tic Tac Toe 2

This position has a symmetric setup, and what looks like extra red pieces are really gray pieces. The board is also set up to have an odd number of squares as I haven’t seen other variants with an odd number of squares. Some of the games show common checkmating patterns to look out for, such as the double check smothered checkmate with two knights. I changed the map slightly during testing, and removed two kings from each player and added 12 gray kings. This is partly so that players no longer need to give up material just to develop, and to make it easier to avoid the double check smothered checkmate with two knights. I also noticed during testing that I hadn’t disabled castling, and considered that castling would actually destroy symmetry in this variant as castling looks different for different players, so once I noticed that I disabled castling. The map is somewhat closed, but I think having the 7 check and the takeover, as well as the chancellor and archbishop help to balance out the closeness of the position in terms of making the game more aggressive. I think takeover also reduces the effect of a player resigning or running out of time on the other players as one player continues to have a zombie opposite while the other two players still have to fight against the pieces of the resigned player. The rooks, although confined to a particular part of the board are still useful for defense and trying to stop KOTH, however I think the bishops are still more valuable in terms of practical value than the rooks.