And because I was bored and had nothing better to do, one last illustration which requires no particular explanation.

Note that this would allow you to redefine movement in different terms.

For example…

• Bishops move only along red lines.
• Rooks move only along blue lines.
• Pawns move along blue lines, but attack along red lines.

…and so on.

On the other hand, it doesn't look much like a chess board anymore—so maybe it's not such a great idea.

Hello 3rdEye ,

Very nice review indeed! Thank you!

Firstly, I love the board you designed!
I did intended for the board to be more evenly spaced, as you drew it, as that is how my model was made in cardboard.

Unfortunately, I didn't really spend a great amount of time on the diagrams or the rulebook layout overall.

I wouldn't mind a revamp on that at some point actually.

As to the rule suggestions.
I see the issue you are talking about with the pawns on lacking support of each other, but the proposal you offered bothers me in two fronts atm:
1) Firstly, it's basically Byzantine Chess layout (http://www.chessvariants.org/shape.dir/circular.gif)

2)  At current setup, it placed a gap between the 3n/4n to 3j/4j area (as a one sided example) because you would have pawns on 3o and 4o and on 3j and 4j, but no pieces between...I'm not sure if this is exactly a problem, but in general it begs the other pieces to line up more like Byzantine chess, which I'm really trying not to do.

That said, I see your point so I'll have to see what can be done on that.

As to the pawn charge...hmm...I haven't had a problem with this quite yet.
I've played this a number of times and it seems natural enough to know a piece has not been moved yet, but I gather your point.

That said, I will definately not remove the movement options of the pawn as that is one of the key pieces of this variant.

So if any alteration were to be made, it would be to clarify Charge in a different manner; possibly like you posited with the "within camp" concept, but I'm not sure on that yet, as it adds a new mechanic into chess completely that isn't natural to chess; "sides".

Very good stuff to consider and very well thought out!
I loved your review.

As to the bishop and rook; yes; this is a consequence of any circular board chess variant.
To me, I consider it a perk. :D 

Here's an alternative layout for the setup, which preserves the four spaces of empty area between the two sides (as in traditional chess) and keeps both Kings on the same side of the board (the right-hand side, from White's point of view). Castling would necessarily have to be altered, possibly by redefining it as simply swapping the King and a Rook—which would mean that castling to the Queen's side would be a diagonal move.

However, it occurs to me that it might be equally interesting—since the board has been so radically altered from the traditional board anyway—to toss out the layout rules entirely, at least for the major pieces. What if the only rule was that the Pawns must be set up in two lines on either side of the 'camp,' but the rest of the layout is optional…? Simply put up a screen between the two sides prior to play, and let the players decide for themselves where to put their major pieces! (Perhaps with a rule that the two bishops must be on opposite colored squares—or perhaps not.)

That might liven things up, yes?

It would...unfortunately, that would make it identical to Byzantine chess less that the royals are flipped with the knights...other than this, however, this would make 360 and Byzantine identical save for pawns and a few other minor rules of Byzantine.

I had never heard of Byzantine Chess before—or at least I don't remember ever hearing of it—but I just Googled it, and there it is.

And oddly enough… the more I thought about that initial layout, the more I thought the King and Queen should go on the inner ring, followed by the Bishops, the Knights, and finally the Rooks on the outer ring. (My reasoning was that it's sort of like folding the first two rows of a normal Chess board back on themselves in the middle, if you know what I mean.)

I had the Byzantine layout in my head, and didn't even know it was a Byzantine layout.

Huh. Maybe I was Byzantine in a previous life or something.

Or maybe I simply did hear about Byzantine Chess at some point in the past, and forgot about it on a conscious level, but the image was still buried in the old cerebral archives.

Either way, weird.

It's extremely logical, if you think about it, to arrive at the setup of Byzantine chess if you are trying to wrap chess onto a circular board.

The difference is that I don't want to wrap chess onto a circular board; I want a circular board for a game of chess to occur on.
There is slight, but important, difference in the approach.

That said, Byzantine chess is a very dynamic variant in it's own right and it's varied rules are interesting in how they place limitations on the piece movements rather than keeping the movements but placing them on a circular board. 

btw...what graphics program are you using?

Those are the same two programs that I use.

I'm curious as to your methods of making the board.

My method was flawed I think in that I made the outline in Illustrator, filled it in using Photoshop, and then moved it back to Illustrator.

In hindsight, I should have done two things:
1) setup a grid, which I did not
2) done everything in Illustrator 

The new game I am working on (which isn't a chess variant, but a chess extraction) is being done completely in Illustrator (this time with grids) and the quality is showing already.
I'm also not making the same mistake and using clipart pieces this time. 

Yeah, for this kind of thing Illustrator can do everything you need to do. You'd only need Photoshop if you wanted to add textures, or background art, or something like that.

As for my methods… well, how about a mini-tutorial thingie, in PDF form? See the attachment below, and enjoy!

360-Board-Tutorial.pdf