THE IDEA BEHIND THE BOARD

Chaturanga Reforged

Two armies with different strengths. One shared battlefield.

ChaturangaPlus meets Chess

Chaturanga Reforged is the game; ChaturangaPlus is its reimagined ancient army. One player commands ChaturangaPlus and the other commands modern Chess.

A balance still being explored

In the creator’s engine tests, ChaturangaPlus has shown a slight edge. Those results are an early guide, not a guarantee of equal chances at every strength or time control. Human play will help us learn more.

Why change the elephant?

The familiar two-square diagonal leaper has very limited reach. Its traditional movement is often treated as settled history, but the elephant’s earliest rules are disputed. The ChaturangaPlus Elephant is a deliberate reinterpretation, not a claim to have recovered the definitive historical rules.

Martinaxo’s essay The True Power of the Elephant: History V/S Modernity explores its weakness and argues for alternative readings of its historical movement. It helped inspire this version.

The Chess Variants Alfil reference shows the historical uncertainty around the piece and compares related movement ideas, including the Silver General from shogi. ChaturangaPlus extends that Silver General shape: the Silver General can move one square diagonally or one square forwards, the Elephant extends that movement one square further. The aim is a historically grounded upgrade rather than an arbitrary invention.

For experienced chess players building board vision, a useful shorthand is to think of the Elephant as a bishop with limited movement, then treat its forward movement as a bonus. Unlike a bishop, though, that forward movement lets the Elephant change the color of the diagonal it occupies.

Why the Empress?

The Empress replaces the ferz because, against a Chess army that contains a queen, ChaturangaPlus needs a powerful piece to create a relatively equivalent army. I debated calling it the Chancellor, which is closer to the original meaning of ferz, but Empress better expresses its intended role as a counterbalance to the Queen from Chess.

The Empress is much less an upgrade to the ferz’s movement and much more a unique piece that happens to correspond in value to the very powerful queen.

Why the Raja?

I renamed the King the Raja because Chaturanga did not have castling. I tested a version of the game without castling, but it proved to be slightly too weak. That gave me the perfect chance to introduce a mechanic that almost no modern chess player has played with: the King’s Leap.

Once per game, the Raja can jump exactly two squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. It can use this leap even after moving normally, creating a distinctive way to escape danger or launch an attack.

Why can’t pawns move two squares?

I wanted Chaturanga Reforged to feel like a truly old version of chess, with more powerful pieces to make it stand a chance against the pieces we all know from modern chess. Adding double pawn movements was one of the balancing levers I experimented with in engine-vs-engine testing, but the current configuration proved to be the closest I could get to a 50–50 win ratio.

Lower-level engines tend to perform better with ChaturangaPlus, while at higher levels Chess gains a slight edge. My assumption is that Chess’s better pawn movement is a large contributing factor: with more depth, the Chess engine can grab more space and convert that space into an advantage. At lower levels, the ChaturangaPlus engine was able to use the Elephant to find some very nice early checkmates.

Know your army

Elephant

One or two squares diagonally in any direction, or one or two squares forward. No jumping, sideways moves, or straight backward moves.

Empress

Bishop slides, knight jumps, and king steps. It is not royal and may be captured.

Raja

A king that cannot castle. Once per game it can jump exactly two squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, even after earlier ordinary moves. It cannot leap out of check or land in check. It can leap over occupied or attacked squares. Fun fact: Raja is a precursor to the word Rex, as in Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Pawns

ChaturangaPlus pawns advance one square at a time and may promote to Empress, Elephant, rook, or knight. Chess pawns retain their two-square first move. En passant applies when a ChaturangaPlus pawn captures a Chess pawn after its double move.

Play to your strengths

Play to your army's strengths and be wary of its weaknesses. Chaturanga pawns can only move one square at a time, so don't let your opponent box you in. The elephant has lost its jump, but its tusks and trunk can bully a king into a corner. The Empress plays like a dragon, but with all the fine movement of a king. The Raja can utilize his King's Leap move even if he's already moved, so you can leap to safety early in the game, or save it for the endgame.

Online play

Your browser remembers your guest identity without an email address or password. New players receive a generated adjective–color–animal name, which they can change in Player info. Set a starting strength using your Chess.com rapid rating if you know it. Ratings stay private and help find opponents; they are not a leaderboard.

Players are paired by clock preference and similar strength, with a wider search as they wait. Colors are random. The player with the longer streak without ChaturangaPlus gets that army; ties are random. Clocks continue if a player disconnects; return in the same browser to reconnect. Draw offers and resignation are available during play.