Cubic chess


Cubic chess is a chess variant invented by Vladimír Pribylinec beginning with an early version in 1977. The game substitutes cubes for the chess pieces, where four of the faces of each cube display a different chess piece, the two other faces are blank and are orientated to the players. This provides an efficient means to change a piece's type. Kings and queens have unique cubes containing only their symbol, effectively behaving as normal.
The game begins like standard chess, with a normal 8×8 chessboard, and cubes rotated so that uppermost faces reflect the standard chess starting position.

Game rules

Cubic chess follows the normal rules of chess, but with the following special differences:
  • Non-pawn pieces that become captured, are retained by the capturer—unrotated—into off-board "stock".
  • For their turn, a player may either:
  • * make a normal chess move using one of the pieces already on the board; or
  • * rotate any pawn such that uppermost on the player's cube is any piece type contained in the player's "stock". A corresponding piece in the stock is immediately removed from the game.

Sample game

When a pawn is rotated to display a new piece type, the new piece is written in parentheses, for example: 6...h7.
1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d5 4.e5 Bg4 5.d4 Nc6 6.Bb5 Bxf3 7.Qxf3 a7 8.Bxc6 Nxc6 9.c3 d5 10.Qf2 Rxa2 11.Rxa2 Bxa2 12.Nd2 h7 13.h3 Be7 14.0-0 f3 15.Qxf3 Bd5 16.Ne4 Rh4 17.Nd6+ Bxd6 18.Qxd5 Nf6 19.Qf3 Bxe5 20.Re1 Nxd4 21.Rxe5 Kf8 22.cxd4 f7 23.Be3 Nxe5 24.dxe5 b7 25.exf6 gxf6 26.Bf2 Ra4 27.g2 Ra1+ 28.Kh2 Rxb2 29.Qg4 Qd6+ 30.Bg3 Rxg2 31.Kxg2 Qd2+ 32.Kf3 Ra3+ 33.Ke4 Ra4+ 34.Kf5 Qd5+ 35.Kxf6 Rxg4 36.hxg4 Rh6++