Ultima

How Ultima is played

Ultima, also called Baroque chess, is Robert Abbott’s game of 1962, played on a chess board with a chess set. Each kind of piece captures its own way, and most of them take pieces they never land on. The goal is to checkmate the opposing king: to attack it so that no move saves it.

The board and the start

White sets up from a1: immobilizer, long leaper, chameleon, king, withdrawer, chameleon, long leaper, coordinator, with the pawns on the second rank. Black’s army is the same turned half round, so Black’s immobilizer stands on h8 and Black’s king on e8. With a chess set the queen is the withdrawer, the knights are the long leapers, the bishops the chameleons, the rook on h1 (a8 for Black) the coordinator and the other rook, set upside down, the immobilizer.

How the pieces move

The king steps one square in any direction, as in chess. The pawn moves any distance along a rank or file, like a rook. Every other piece moves any distance in any straight line, like a queen. No piece but the king ever moves onto an occupied square. There is no castling, no promotion, no double step and no en passant.

How each piece takes

The king takes by moving onto a piece. The pawn pinches: when it lands next to an enemy piece along a rank or file and one of your pieces stands directly on the other side, that piece is taken, up to three at once. The withdrawer takes the enemy piece next to it by moving directly away from it. The long leaper leaps along its line over enemy pieces, several in one move, each with an empty square directly behind it. The coordinator takes the enemy pieces on the two corners of the rectangle it forms with your king: on its own rank and the king’s file, and on its own file and the king’s rank. The chameleon takes each enemy piece the way that piece takes: pawns by a pinch on a move along a rank or file, the withdrawer by moving away from it, long leapers by leaping, the coordinator by coordinating with your king, and the king only by a king’s step onto it. It never takes a chameleon or the immobilizer, and one move may take pieces in several of these ways.

The immobilizer

The immobilizer takes nothing. Every enemy piece on the eight squares around it is frozen: it may not move while the immobilizer stays, the king too. A piece passing by is not frozen. Two enemy immobilizers next to each other freeze each other and go on freezing everything else around them. A chameleon next to an enemy immobilizer freezes it and is frozen by it. A frozen piece threatens nothing.

Removing a frozen piece

Instead of a move, a player may take one of their own frozen pieces off the board, but never the king. It does not come back. Like any move it may not leave your king capturable.

Winning

Checkmate wins. A king is in check when an unfrozen enemy piece could take it by its own way of capturing, so a king may not step next to an enemy chameleon or onto a square where a coordinator, a pawn, a withdrawer or a long leaper could take it. A player who cannot move, even without being in check, has lost.

Draws

Abbott’s texts name no draw, so the app draws as chess does: the same position for the third time with the same player to move, fifty moves by each side without a capture or a removed piece, or two bare kings.

Other readings

The app plays the rules of Abbott’s book of 1963, as most sources give them. In his first version of 1962 the kings stood as in chess and the long leaper took only one piece a move. David MacKay’s Cambridge rules mirror the start, let the chameleon take only the pieces its move’s shape fits and have no removal; Boardspace scores a stalemate as a draw; Zillions of Games plays to capture the king. A rule of the 1968 edition, that a piece on its owner’s nth rank moves at most n squares, Abbott himself called a bad idea, and it is not played.

The story

the United States · from 1962; named Ultima in 1963

When and where

Ultima is the game of Robert Abbott (1933–2018), an American inventor of games from St. Louis, also known for the card game Eleusis (1956) and for his logic mazes. In 1961 he was reading H. J. R. Murray’s history of board games, which sorts the games by how they capture, and asked himself why not a game with many forms of capture. Two months of experiments gave seven kinds of piece.

How it changed

Four of its captures come from older games: the pinch of hnefatafl and the Roman latrunculi, the long leap of Polish and Spanish draughts and the withdrawal of fanorona from Madagascar; the coordinator, the immobilizer and the chameleon are Abbott’s own. It first appeared without a name, as “? ? ?”, in Recreational Mathematics Magazine in August 1962, which offered two free years to whoever named it; a reader proposed Baroque, and won. In 1963 Abbott’s New Card Games printed it with two rules changed, the long leaper taking several pieces and the kings no longer facing each other, and the publisher renamed it Ultima. Abbott still liked Baroque better.

Today

From the 1960s to the 1990s it was played by post in the American club NOST and in Italy’s AISE. NOST’s leading player Paul Yearout wrote a series on it in World Game Review, and Abbott answered in 1988 with “What’s Wrong With Ultima”: defence is stronger than attack, and the pawns are the weakest pieces. A paperback of 1968 added a rule limiting a piece’s move by its rank, which Abbott called a pretty bad idea; everyone plays the rules of 1963. It has been in Zillions of Games since 1998 and is played on Game Courier, and a circle in Cambridge has played its own rules since 1974.

Did you know?

Its pieces became standard pieces of fairy chess, and its descendants include Renaissance (1975), Rococo (2002) and Maxima (2003). Abbott’s twelve Ultima problems of the early 1960s went on his website in 2004.

Sources: Robert Abbott · The Chess Variant Pages · Wikipedia · David MacKay

More games

Chess and variants

• Chess · Classic chess, or Chess960 with a shuffled back rank.
• Chess960 · Fischer random chess: the back rank starts in one of 960 setups.
• Antichess · Losing chess: give away all your pieces, captures are compulsory.
• Atomic chess · Every capture is an explosion that clears the pieces around it.
• Crazyhouse · Captured pieces change sides and can be dropped back onto the board.
• Hostage chess · Captured men become hostages and come back by exchange or from the airfield.
• Three-check · Chess where the third check wins, so every check counts.
• King of the Hill · Chess where a king that reaches the centre wins at once.
• Jeson Mor · Mongolia’s nine horses: take the centre and hold it for a move.
• Racing Kings · No pawns, no checks: the first king on the far rank wins.
• Horde · 36 white pawns storm a full black army.
• Dunsany’s chess · Lord Dunsany’s game of 1942: 32 pawns against a full army.
• Los Alamos chess · Chess on 6 × 6 without bishops, the first game a computer played (1956).
• Duck chess · After every move you move the duck, which blocks everyone. No check.
• Marseillais chess · Two moves a turn, with one piece or two; White starts with one.
• Progressive chess · One move, then two, then three: each turn is one move longer.
• Fog of War · You only see where your pieces can move. Capture the king to win.
• Kriegspiel · Only your own pieces in sight; an umpire judges every move.
• Alice chess · Two boards: every piece that moves passes through to the other one.
• Raumschach 3D · Chess in a 5 × 5 × 5 cube: five boards stacked, and the unicorn.
• Old Raumschach · Maack’s cube as played before 1919: five pawns above the pieces.
• Friendly Chess · Nothing is captured: pieces unite and set off chain reactions.
• Gliński’s hexagonal chess · Chess on 91 hexagons: three bishops, rooks in six directions.
• McCooey’s hexagonal chess · Hexagonal chess closer to chess: seven pawns that take diagonally.
• Shafran’s hexagonal chess · Hexagonal chess on 70 cells, with castling and pawns that step three.
• Spartan chess · Persians against Spartans: chess’ army against two kings and new pieces.
• Legan chess · The armies in opposite corners; pawns step diagonally towards the far one.

Big chess

• Complete chess · The Arabic chess of the 9th century on 10 × 10, with two dabbābas a side.
• Courier chess · Medieval Germany’s chess on a 12 × 8 board, with the courier, the man and the schleich.
• Grande Acedrex · Alfonso X’s great chess on a 12 × 12 board, with lions, giraffes and a roc.
• Tamerlane chess · Timur’s great chess on an 11 × 10 board, with giraffes, camels and citadels.
• Carrera’s chess · The first chess on ten files, from a Sicilian priest’s book of 1617.
• Duke of Rutland’s chess · Fourteen files, with the concubine and two crowned rooks a side.
• Bird’s chess · Henry Bird’s ten-file chess of 1874, with the guard and the equerry.
• Capablanca chess · Ten files and two new pieces: the archbishop and the chancellor.
• Gothic chess · Ed Trice’s setup of 2000, today called Trice’s Chess.
• Capablanca Random · Capablanca chess from one of 12,118 shuffled starts.
• Embassy chess · Grand chess’ row of pieces on a 10 × 8 board.
• Janus chess · Two januses a side, each moving as a bishop or a knight.
• Grand chess · Christian Freeling’s 10 × 10 game: pawns promote only to lost pieces.
• S-chess · Chess with a hawk and an elephant in hand, placed as the back rank leaves.

The chess family

• Chaturanga · India’s ancient chess, the root of the family: take the king to win.
• Shatranj · The medieval ancestor of chess, with a weak ferz and a jumping alfil.
• Byzantine chess · Shatranj on a round board: the rook circles, pawns never promote.
• Medieval chess · Europe’s chess before 1475: the ferz and the king may leap on their first move.
• Senterej · Ethiopian chess: no turns until the first capture, then Shatranj.
• Shatar · Mongolian chess: the bers, the camel, and a mate that needs a shak.
• Makruk · Thai chess: a slow, strategic game with a counting rule.
• Ouk Chatrang · Cambodian chess: Makruk with a leap for the king and the met.
• Sittuyin · Burmese chess: set up your pieces, then promote on the diagonals.
• Kar Ouk · Ouk Chatrang where the first check wins: guard your king.
• Malay chess · Chess of the Malay world: the king leaps, a crowned pawn walks back.
• Xiangqi · Chinese chess: a river, palaces and a cannon that jumps to capture.
• Minixiangqi · Xiangqi on 7 × 7 points: no river, no advisors, no elephants.
• Manchu chess · Red’s lone chariot moves as horse and cannon too, against a full army.
• Jieqi · Xiangqi with the pieces face down: each is revealed by its first move.
• Banqi · Xiangqi’s pieces face down on half a board: turn them up, take by rank.
• Janggi · Korean chess: no river, palace diagonals and a cannon that always jumps.
• Shogi · Japanese chess: captured pieces return to the board on your side.
• Minishogi · Shogi on a 5 × 5 board: six pieces a side, short and sharp games.
• Chu shogi · Japan’s great shogi on 12 × 12: no drops, and a lion that moves twice.
• Tori shogi · Bird shogi on 7 × 7: a phoenix, quails and swallows, with drops.

More players

• Chaturaji · India’s four-handed chess: kings can be captured, captures score.
• Four Seasons Chess · Alfonso X’s chess for four from 1283: four seasons, the last king wins.
• Three-player chess · Three armies on a hexagonal board: you against two bots.
• Four-player chess · Four armies on a cross-shaped board: in teams or all against all.
• Bughouse · Two boards, two teams: what you capture goes to your partner's hand.
• Eight-player chess · Eight armies on a board of 516 squares: all against all, in pairs or four against four.
• Verney’s four-handed chess · Verney’s game of 1881: two against two, mate both enemy kings.
• Verney’s eight-handed chess · Verney’s game for eight of 1884: four against four on 448 squares.