Great thing is you can use standard chess pieces for this game! From wikipedia: These are, in order from strongest to weakest: one elephant, one camel, two horses, two dogs, two cats, and eight rabbits. These may be represented by the king, queen, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns respectively when one plays using a chess set.
@@LuxisAlukard You can in alot of chess sets too. Nice sets try to make the height of the piece correlate to its value. And rooks are more valuable than knights in chess
Well... aside from the fact that there are no captures, no special moves for individual pieces, and pieces can only be permanently removed from the board via four out of the 64 squares. And unlike pawns, rabbits can't even do anything offensive against the opposing pieces (they can help with defensive plays).
@@destroyergod_9205 It was designed by a computer engineer, so I guess he knew what would be difficult for an AI. However, that was back in 2003. AI has gotten a lot better since then and I think computers can now play this game easily.
Imagine people start to develop gambits, openings, defenses, strategical placements of the pieces according to deducible plays of your opponent based of their set up. Since there’s more ways to set up the starting positions it would be insane.
@@jondo7680 The prize was offered only up to 2020 or so for someone to develop software that could be a selected set of masters at it Regardless of the details, I'm sure it's already expired, and contemporary AI could do it better by simply learning biases and probabilities in human player behavior after it learns the ruleset and win conditions
The number of each piece is made to resemble a standard chess set. King=elephant, queen=camel, rook=horse, bishop=dog, Knight=cat, pawn=rabbit. So as long as you can mark the trap spaces on a chess board, you can play this game with a standard chess set
@@ikindajustexist520 I set them so the piece heirarchy in Arimaa matches the point values associated with classic chess pieces. In Arimaa, the horse is 3rd most powerful. In chess, assuming the king is worth infinite points cuz you lose without it, the rook is the 3rd most valuable piece.
The game was designed to be used with a chessboard and pieces, so you don’t even need to buy anything new if you have a chess set. You just need tiny pieces of black paper or coins or whatever to stand in for the holes.
Thank you for this great introductory video of Arimaa. This video is clear to understand. I have just learned this interesting game recently and I really love it! However, in my opinion, there is one mistake in the video that could be fixed and one suggestion to add in the future, perhaps a revised, refresher video or something like that! At 3:18, this video explains if a player (in this case, it is Gold) is unable to make a move because all of Gold's pieces are frozen or Gold does not have any legal moves, then Gold lose the game. It is actually the correct rule, but the placement of the pieces will probably be confusing. Assuming that it is Gold's turn, actually the two Gold rabbits on the square G1 and H2 are ABLE TO MOVE because those two are both adjacent to Gold elephant on the square H1 and the square G2 is not blocked. For instance, if the silver cat on the square D2 or H7 is on the square G2 instead, then Gold loses the game because those two gold rabbits no longer have a vacant square to move to. A good thing to add, regarding legal moves, unlike Chess, 'threefold repetition' (the same position occurs three times during the game) is forbidden/illegal in Arimaa. If threefold repetition is the only move left that a player has, that player loses the game due to not having any legal moves.
"You may not push pieces off the board" What the scene looks like: "It's over anakin, i have the high ground!" "You underestimate my power!" *undos illegal move*
Recently found out about this game through reading the Teen Titans Academy comics, as the first issue had one of the characters playing it. Interesting to find out how to play.
In xiangqi, general can move 1 point orthogonally inside the palace. While Chinese pawn move left and right once it cross the River. But I meant the pieces of arimaa piece movement
The pieces in the set used there are just awfully similar to each other, making it extra hard to see which one can push/pull which other one. They should have used just figures displaying the full animal instead of just the head. Or, what did when playing it with my wife, use the Looney Pyramids you know e.g. from Martian chess - tiny ones for the rabbits, medium ones for cats, medium + tiny for dog, big one for horse, big + tiny for camel, big + medium for elephant (or some other clearly distinguishable series). Of course you need enough of one color to make a full set (though the hat can be of a different color, if needed).
@@versuzzero5335 Even though chess is more complicated in terms of rulesets, I've heard that this game is more complicated in terms of AI computation power needed.
@@danielyuan9862 it was specifically designed to be easy for human players and very difficult for computers. The main issues that AI has with the game are that because each player gets four actions per turn, there’s a massive amount of computation involved in figuring out what actions to take and, because it’s so hard to capture pieces, the game state doesn’t tend to simplify much as the game is played, unlike chess, which gets easier to calculate as pieces are removed
You neglected to mention that Arimaa can be played on an ordinary chessboard using ordinary chess pieces: K=Elephant, Q=Camel, R=Horse, B=dog, N=Cat, and P=Rabbit. Put a coin on c3, c6, f3, and f6 to represent the traps.
3:28 wouldn't the silver player lose in that scenario, because the silver player has no rabbit left => immediately loses and can't kill the enemy rabbit with it. Or is that an exception?
@@Viel_Glueck yes tijimen's response is much more accurate, the 4 steps are a single move but definitely do not happen at the same time (there are many obvious examples). I didn't think my response through :P I play arimaa only online and you make all the steps before sending the move and can change your steps in the meantime. The win condition is evaluated at the end when you finish your move.
@@Viel_Glueck Good observation. However only the win/lose conditions are evaluated at the end of the turn. Freezing, captures, etc are evaluated after each step.
Sounds interesting but not at all "intuitively simple" like the game box says. There were a lot of little rules that seem like they can completely upset your strategy.
This game is so weird. Interestingly i believe this came from “animal chess” not its actual name but it’s from china and is just as weird and unessisarly complicated while also being stratigicaly simple
Great thing is you can use standard chess pieces for this game!
From wikipedia:
These are, in order from strongest to weakest: one elephant, one camel, two horses, two dogs, two cats, and eight rabbits. These may be represented by the king, queen, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns respectively when one plays using a chess set.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to make the knights the horses?
@@Penguinmanereikel I agree, but's what wiki said :)
@@Penguinmanereikel Maybe knights are smaller pieces? Because in Arimaa - you can tell thee difference just by the size
@@LuxisAlukard I think it is just based on the value of pieces. I feel like bishops are usually taller than the higher-valued rooks
@@LuxisAlukard You can in alot of chess sets too. Nice sets try to make the height of the piece correlate to its value. And rooks are more valuable than knights in chess
2:27 I love how you used the cat as an example of a piece pushing another off the board
Lol
Hilarious!
Just like the simulations
I like how pulling the opponent down with you by triggering a lose condition for both players counts as a win.
Flashbacks to Bowser's kamikaze grapple in Smash Bros
I don't have to win, you have to lose.
@@EdKolis lmfaooo
Death for you, death for me.
if i ever play this game, ill count that as forcing a draw
So... basically the goal of the game is to promote a pawn.
Exactly
The Passed Pawn and score a touchdown
exactly
Not at all. The way the pieces move and interact with each other is entirely different. The win condition will be suited to fit those rules.
Well... aside from the fact that there are no captures, no special moves for individual pieces, and pieces can only be permanently removed from the board via four out of the 64 squares.
And unlike pawns, rabbits can't even do anything offensive against the opposing pieces (they can help with defensive plays).
This game was designed specifically to be difficult for a computer to play but easy for a human.
How?
@@destroyergod_9205 It was designed by a computer engineer, so I guess he knew what would be difficult for an AI. However, that was back in 2003. AI has gotten a lot better since then and I think computers can now play this game easily.
@@destroyergod_9205 The branching factor of this game is a lot higher than chess. Its more than 17 thousand
@@imacrostutorial But that's only because you essentially have 4 moves per turn.
@@danielyuan9862 Also because the player chooses the starting position
This one is very interesting. I'd love to see how full games of this play out and the way the mechanics interact.
Imagine people start to develop gambits, openings, defenses, strategical placements of the pieces according to deducible plays of your opponent based of their set up. Since there’s more ways to set up the starting positions it would be insane.
This game was designed to be hard for computers, and I think they even have some price going on I don't know if someone won.
There's gonna be a friggin lead metagame
@@jondo7680
The prize was offered only up to 2020 or so for someone to develop software that could be a selected set of masters at it
Regardless of the details, I'm sure it's already expired, and contemporary AI could do it better by simply learning biases and probabilities in human player behavior after it learns the ruleset and win conditions
I was expecting "The rules are the same as the regular chess except for these changes" lmao
Except for these changes: the pieces are attending a furry convention!
THERE RULES ARE THE SAME AS ANIMAL CHESS EXCEPT FOR THESE CHANGES
En passant is allowed
That's only if you flip the board over.
The number of each piece is made to resemble a standard chess set. King=elephant, queen=camel, rook=horse, bishop=dog, Knight=cat, pawn=rabbit. So as long as you can mark the trap spaces on a chess board, you can play this game with a standard chess set
Shouldn’t the knight be horse?
@@ikindajustexist520 I set them so the piece heirarchy in Arimaa matches the point values associated with classic chess pieces. In Arimaa, the horse is 3rd most powerful. In chess, assuming the king is worth infinite points cuz you lose without it, the rook is the 3rd most valuable piece.
the traps are consistent, also tsg said themselves that the horse is the knight when used for normal chess
Or Chinese chess or Japanese chess
chess 2 is finally here! props to the devs! miss you chess 1
Faerie chess, Musketeers chess
gotta blunder about 10000 quadrillion more queens until that happens… so it’ll be about a second.
@@cinderare Marsellais Chess
Onitama
The pieces look difficult to distinguish between. Other than that this looks very good.
I agree. At first glance I thought there are only big and small pieces, and all the big ones are the same, lmao.
The game was designed to be used with a chessboard and pieces, so you don’t even need to buy anything new if you have a chess set. You just need tiny pieces of black paper or coins or whatever to stand in for the holes.
@@somekindofgnome8477 Good point.
@@somekindofgnome8477 I saw someone say that in another comment.
69 likes, *nice*
I would love to see you cover Archon, the fantasy computer/NES chess game
This game is EVERYTHING Animal Chess should've been
Thank you for this great introductory video of Arimaa. This video is clear to understand. I have just learned this interesting game recently and I really love it!
However, in my opinion, there is one mistake in the video that could be fixed and one suggestion to add in the future, perhaps a revised, refresher video or something like that!
At 3:18, this video explains if a player (in this case, it is Gold) is unable to make a move because all of Gold's pieces are frozen or Gold does not have any legal moves, then Gold lose the game. It is actually the correct rule, but the placement of the pieces will probably be confusing.
Assuming that it is Gold's turn, actually the two Gold rabbits on the square G1 and H2 are ABLE TO MOVE because those two are both adjacent to Gold elephant on the square H1 and the square G2 is not blocked.
For instance, if the silver cat on the square D2 or H7 is on the square G2 instead, then Gold loses the game because those two gold rabbits no longer have a vacant square to move to.
A good thing to add, regarding legal moves, unlike Chess, 'threefold repetition' (the same position occurs three times during the game) is forbidden/illegal in Arimaa. If threefold repetition is the only move left that a player has, that player loses the game due to not having any legal moves.
Good catch, that is indeed a mistake
It's surprisingly simple yet so intriguing.
3:18 aren't the two rabbits at the bottom-left allowed to move because they are adjacent to the elephant?
Is En Passant Allow?
Yes but only in the weird variant of this called ‘chess’, but I’m sure it’ll never catch on
@@Sarahbryson321 Chess? Oh! You mean that bad game where stalemate is a draw? Yea, it will never catch on.
here before the dumb guy says "ThIs Is NoT cHeSs"
Thls ls NoT cHeSs
Are you allowed to pass a square adjacent to a stronger enemy piece, even if you have no ally pieces next to that square?
No. Once you hit the adjacent square, the piece is immobilized
This is both similar to chess and very different at the same time.
when you see the video is 3:45 long and it's by triple s games, you knows it's complicated
link in description goes to "arimaa borad game" instead of board game
that was clear and concise! thank you!
"You may not push pieces off the board"
What the scene looks like:
"It's over anakin, i have the high ground!"
"You underestimate my power!"
*undos illegal move*
I really wish i could see someone play all these games
Recently found out about this game through reading the Teen Titans Academy comics, as the first issue had one of the characters playing it. Interesting to find out how to play.
In xiangqi, general can move 1 point orthogonally inside the palace. While Chinese pawn move left and right once it cross the River. But I meant the pieces of arimaa piece movement
3:21 why does gold elephant not count as a friendly that would allow the neighboring rabbits(?) to move unfrozen?
Investing concept, would like to know the strategies:D
Beautiful concept
The pieces in the set used there are just awfully similar to each other, making it extra hard to see which one can push/pull which other one. They should have used just figures displaying the full animal instead of just the head.
Or, what did when playing it with my wife, use the Looney Pyramids you know e.g. from Martian chess - tiny ones for the rabbits, medium ones for cats, medium + tiny for dog, big one for horse, big + tiny for camel, big + medium for elephant (or some other clearly distinguishable series). Of course you need enough of one color to make a full set (though the hat can be of a different color, if needed).
This is a surprisingly good game. Certainly worth trying out.
From the thumbnail, i thought that this would be a chess variant. Glad to have been proven wrong.
The rules are the same as regular chess, except for these changes. For a refresher of those rules, check out this video☝️.
Mistake on 3:22 - the two rabbits are not frozen, because the elephant is orthogonoly to them!
Make a "how to play" for "Games of the Generals"!
very complicate game...but interesting, nice video!
Its actually a lot simpler than chess because all pieces move the same way...
It can even be played with chess pieces and board.
I think chess is more complicated than this when it was newly created.
But yes, simple games are hard to invent as time goes on.
@@versuzzero5335 Even though chess is more complicated in terms of rulesets, I've heard that this game is more complicated in terms of AI computation power needed.
@@danielyuan9862 it was specifically designed to be easy for human players and very difficult for computers. The main issues that AI has with the game are that because each player gets four actions per turn, there’s a massive amount of computation involved in figuring out what actions to take and, because it’s so hard to capture pieces, the game state doesn’t tend to simplify much as the game is played, unlike chess, which gets easier to calculate as pieces are removed
You neglected to mention that Arimaa can be played on an ordinary chessboard using ordinary chess pieces: K=Elephant, Q=Camel, R=Horse, B=dog, N=Cat, and P=Rabbit. Put a coin on c3, c6, f3, and f6 to represent the traps.
Looks like that elephant is not going to be opposed by a rabbit when there's no mouse or rat.
3:28 wouldn't the silver player lose in that scenario, because the silver player has no rabbit left => immediately loses and can't kill the enemy rabbit with it. Or is that an exception?
all 4 steps are a single move and happen at the same time
you only lose/win at the end of your turn.
@@Robinmine that can't be true, because then he couldn't drag the enemy rabbit in the spot his rabbit died in (because it would be occupied)
@@Viel_Glueck yes tijimen's response is much more accurate, the 4 steps are a single move but definitely do not happen at the same time (there are many obvious examples). I didn't think my response through :P I play arimaa only online and you make all the steps before sending the move and can change your steps in the meantime. The win condition is evaluated at the end when you finish your move.
@@Viel_Glueck Good observation. However only the win/lose conditions are evaluated at the end of the turn. Freezing, captures, etc are evaluated after each step.
Is there a limited number of each piece? List them in the replies
Same number of pieces as in chess, but different names for the pieces. 1 elephant, 1 camel, 2 horses, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 8 rabbits.
Can a partition be used in between during setup???
Sure. It's a board game, they can't exactly stop you
Anybody know how to solve the arimaa puzzles app. Camel number 8, par 2???
Sounds interesting but not at all "intuitively simple" like the game box says. There were a lot of little rules that seem like they can completely upset your strategy.
If only this game was more mainstream...
*You may push or pull the piece protected for a friendly piece, so that your opponents piece was removed.
I feel like it should have a pig an we should call it pig push.
What's the history/origins of this game?
So horsey from chess finally got his own spinoff?
Wow, this is a really cool game
I like this game!
How to play Spanish Card games??
Is there a way for the game to end in a draw???
If I understand correctly, no, they seem to have made it so that forcing a draw on your turn is a win condition
Can you push an opponent's piece into a trap?
He literally does
this is very interesting
fun fact: this game was designed to be as hard to make a bot for while being a easy for humans to play as possible
A wise guy said: teamwork makes the dream work
I'm waiting for a game that looks nothing like chess but the opening still be "the rules are etbe same as regular chess except for these changes.
Why?
hold on is en passant allowed or not?
ITS NOT CHESS SO ITS NOT ALLOWED
I like this game
I like how at first glance it just looks like furry chess, but then it has nothing to do with Chess whatsoever
This game is so weird. Interestingly i believe this came from “animal chess” not its actual name but it’s from china and is just as weird and unessisarly complicated while also being stratigicaly simple
arimaa, also called furry chess. how to play.
At least!
I’m waiting for chess 3 lol
I kinda feel like it needs a mouse to beat the elephant, sort of like the spy in stratego.
&arimaa kinda looks like Chess
Only now…
this is like chess+abalone+chekers
АРИМАА
Ok
One Elephant
First Play
Is chess
This is old chess
The furries made their own chess
2nd
so, like chess, just better
leki
I said aringma
Pin me
White Bishop - - Black Knight (You) - - Black King
@@danielyuan9862 lmao
Chess Lite
I like how at first glance it just looks like furry chess, but then it has nothing to do with Chess whatsoever