#Chess setup manuals
#Chess setup manual

He moves a movable level which contains one of his pawns and no other.

Is fulfilled (and of course, the move doesn't leave him in check): Moving movable levelsĪ player can move a movable level when one of the following conditions Players may, when it is their turn, either move a movable level (under Hence, there can be a movable level below and above the same corner. The position of the pieces when the game starts is depicted below theīoard is `flattened' for ease of display.Įach of the movable levels can be above or below any corner of one of Side view with fixed and movable levels Starting position Squares, and white squares are above and below white squares. Note that always black squares are above and below black When the movable levels go to a different spot, they will always beĪbove or below a corner of a fixed level, with three squares extendingįrom the level. Of the board below it, while the other three corners have no fixed level The movable levels find themselves initially above the outermostĬorners of the upper and lower level i.e., one of its corner has a corner Row of the previous level, while the other sides of all fixed levels are The position of theįixed levels looks like a staircase: each next level starts above the third Have size two by two and can be moved by the players. Of these have size four by four, and have a fixed position the four others The three dimensional board consists of seven different levels.

Building Your Own Star Trek Tridimensional Chess.

Note that Bartmess has updated his rules since this time, and whether or not it was supposed to be Bartmess's rules, it will not be up-to-date with the current rules. Dixon's description, reworded by site founder Hans Bodlaender, follows. It is presently unclear whether this was a description of the rules published by Bartmess or Dixon's own rules for the game. In the early 1990's, James Dixon (1947 - 2010), an extreme Star Trek fan who according to secondhand hearsay from an unknown source, allegedly had a breakdown and eventually died after the 2009 Star Trek reboot came out, posted his own description of the rules to a newsgroup. Charlie Roth has a revision of the Bartmess rules on a page called Star Trek 3-D Chess Rules, Jens Meder has a site describing rules to Three-Dimensional Chess, and this site includes the following variants by Larry Lynn Smith: Although he has not published the whole rules online, he has provided a page with a partial description of the game.īartmess is by no means the only person to devise rules for playing a game with the equipment seen in Star Trek.

#Chess setup manuals

So, he did, and he has been selling printed manuals of the game from his own website. So he wrote to the book's author, Franz Joseph Schnaubelt, who encouraged him to develop rules for the game himself.

#Chess setup manual

After instructions for making the board were published in the Starfleet Technical Reference Manual in 1976, Star Trek fan Andrew Bartmess was excited about this but also disappointed that no rules were provided for the game. The set used in Star Trek was a prop with no particular rules behind it. You can find these on ebay by searching for star trek chess or for tridimensional chess. However, Star Trek tridimensional sets are available with a different piece set. You may search ebay for ganine classic chess, but you will rarely find a set.

Perhaps because of their association with Star Trek, they have become the rarest and most collectible of all the Peter Ganine designs. The Classic pieces are a futuristic variation of the Staunton design. Superba), which shows faces, or Conqueror, which are figurine. The particular design used in Star Trek is called Classic, and it should not be confused with Gothic (a.k.a. The pieces they used were designed by Peter Ganine, who is known for various Chess piece designs. The board consisted of three 4x4 layers and four more 2x2 areas for a total of 64 squares, the same number as there are in Chess. Being three-dimensional and unusual in design, it leaves the impression that it is a game requiring even greater skill and intelligence than Chess. In a number of Star Trek episodes, Kirk and Spock can be seen playing a three dimensionalĬhess variant together.