Delayed Promotion in Enochian Chess

In ordinary chess a pawn that reaches the last rank promotes at once, and the choice is made on the spot. Enochian chess adds a condition that has no equivalent in the familiar game. A pawn reaching its promotion edge does not automatically transform. Promotion is delayed until the army has lost at least one pawn. Until that debt is paid, a pawn that arrives at the edge stands there, waiting, unpromoted.

Every pawn has its own far edge

First, a reminder of where pawns are heading. The four armies march in four different directions. Earth's pawns advance toward file h, Water's toward file a, Fire's toward rank 8, and Air's toward rank 1. That destination edge is the army's promotion edge. A pawn moves one square straight forward and captures one square diagonally forward, with no double first step and no en passant, so reaching the far side is a patient business to begin with. Getting there is the easy part of the rule to understand. The delay is the twist.

The waiting pawn

Suppose your army has not yet lost a single pawn and one of your pawns reaches its promotion edge. It does not become a major piece. It waits on the edge, still a pawn, holding its square. The moment your army loses a pawn, anywhere on the board, the waiting pawn promotes. The rule ties one pawn's reward to another pawn's loss, so an army that has kept all its foot soldiers intact simply cannot cash one in yet. It is a built-in brake on rushing a single runner up the board before the fight has cost you anything.

What the pawn promotes into

When promotion does happen, the pawn normally becomes the piece it belongs to: the Rook's pawn becomes a Rook, the Queen's pawn a Queen, and so on, since every pawn is bound to one major piece from the start. There is a corner exception. A pawn that promotes while standing on a corner square takes the piece that shared the King's throne in that game's setting, rather than its usual one. And in the rare endgame where an army is down to its King and one last pawn, that pawn is privileged and its promotion may be chosen freely; that case is covered in the privileged pawn.

Why delay promotion at all

The delay changes how you value a fast pawn. In ordinary chess a passed pawn one step from queening is a decisive threat all by itself. In Enochian chess that same pawn may be stuck waiting, its promotion hostage to a loss your army has not yet suffered. It rewards armies that trade and bleed a little rather than hoarding every pawn, and it keeps the board from being decided too early by a single sprint. For the pieces a pawn can become and how they move once promoted, see the pawns and how the pieces move.

Keep reading

Follow the pawn further into the privileged pawn, meet all four in the pawns, or step back to the four elements that set each army’s direction.