Wildebeest Chess Wildebeest Chess 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. The inventor's intent is "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
Three-dimensional chess by squares and often called "cells") alternate in color in all three dimensions. The horizontal levels are denoted by capital letters A through E. Ranks and files of a level are denoted using algebraic notation. White starts on the A and B levels and Black starts on E and D. White moves first. The game objective, as in standard chess, is checkmate. Rooks, bishops, and knights move as they do in chess in any given plane. Probably the most familiar 3D chess variant to the general public is the game of Tri-Dimensional Chess (or Tri-D Chess), which can be seen