History of BASTARDO game.

The "Bastardo" game born in Torino (Turin, Italy) in August, 1991. It is holiday time, and hot and moistness oppress the few inhabitants left in this industrial city. Among these, four friends. Alessio. Roberto. Sergio. Paolo. Almost all the pubs in the city are closed for holidays. And, however, to go out wold mean to bear sultriness and mosquitoes. A torture. It's much better to stay home.

So we meet at Alessio's home, to play role games, videogames or chess. We all like chess.
But we are four, and chess is for two. Why not to find a way to play in four, all together?

Sergio's volcanic imagination is brought into action.
Two players, sixteen pieces. Four players, eight pieces.
We should divide in half the normal set of pieces. Kings are only two, but we should pretend the Queens are Kings and so we have four Kings.
Where to put the pieces? In the corners. Every player is placed in a corner of the chessboard, 4x4.
Some attempt, and we obtain a disposition that works.
Pawns take their place diagonally, to protect each other. The Tower at the bottom, to protect the first Pawn and the King, that stands in the corner. The Knight above the King, and the Bishop above the Knight : both may cope with diagonal attacks against the King.

But how to tell one player's white from one other player's white ? One's blacks from one other's blacks ?
No problem : we should put the chess pieces over the draughts pieces, obtaining the four combinations : white-white, white-black, black-white, black-black.

The rules need only little changes. The normal chess moves are good enough and the games end to a sufficient chaos level : it is mostly this to make us enthusiast over and over.
To add more chaos Roberto propose to promote the Pawns to Amazons instead of Queens. The Amazon is a monstruous piece, that moves like a Queen and like a Knight too. So a Pawn's promotion is a terrible event, that enormously unbalances the game. All the opponents do their utmost to avoid that someone gets an Amazon.
And we all agree on the fact that the check has not to be declared. It is much more funny to leave an inattentive player ("il pollo", that is, the chicken) to take the consequences and take his unaware King ! (eventually making a fool of him)

We begin to become fond of this game : all the summer 1991 goes playing the game the still has no name.
And some peculiarities begin to be clear : playing in four, each against each other, each player is in a disadvantageous position. Each player has a (potential) opponent three times bigger than him. It's better to be hidden. It's better to have alliances. It's better to move after the others.
But the games, after an initial circumspection, end punctually in exponential massacres.
Alliances are done and undone, and all of us like the taste of unforeseeable, the taste of uncertain result moves, the hazzard, the wickedness against some other.
After we have remarked that the word " BASTARDO" is pronounced more and more often during this games, that word become the name of the game.

We don't like anymore to play with chess pieces over draught pieces.
So Roberto propose : why don't we create some hardware to this game ? Imagine to have, each of us, a different set of pieces, so that we should better distinguish one other.
And a Chessboard.
Imagine : a chessboard builded by us, in glass and mirror.
Each of us has his own corner, each may decorate his corner his own style.
Nay, each may build up his pieces his own style.

This proposal is enthusiastically accepted.

Alessio, obsessed by Fractals, builds his first set using some Mandelbrot particulars, printed on trasparent paper, putting them between two glass squares, and he decorates his corner with some C program fragments.
Roberto paints his corner drawing some sky-blue Greek temple, and builds his set of pieces with little glass balls in blue, black and white colors, adding some painted metal slices.
Sergio obtains his first set of pieces using a small set of tarot cards, and paints in his corner a picture of the Shadow Dancers, black like shadows and with red eyes, caught in the act of dancing.
Paolo, completely identified with his Dungeons & Dragons character (a clerical), consecrates his corner to Huckle God and decorates the corner with Huckle's symbol, using D&D dices as his set of pieces.

In the following seasons we play in a lot of pubs in our city, attracting the attention and the compliments of everyone standing to watch our strange game, our strange chessboard and strange pieces.

The game begins to attract some friends, that build up other sets of personal pieces. After two years the players are enough to call a little tournament, whose winner become the "Gran Bastardo" (Big Bastardo) and has the right to play with other player's pieces.

In the meanwhile the thirst for novelties gives no rest: the classical Bastardo game needs innovations. So we give birth to the first "Perversions" of the Bastardo game.
Sergio produces the more successful: Objective Bastardo. Each player casts a card by lot from a pack of tarots, each tarot has associated an objective, that is, an aim to reach. Reaching the objective leads to an anticipate win before the actual end of the game.
To destroy one specific opponent, to be destroyed first, to give four checks consecutively, to take five Pawns are simple objectives. Other objectives are added time by time, making this Perversion the more and more varied and funny.

Another Perversion, the Dynamic Bastardo, says to dispose the pieces in cells choosed by each player, one at a time. So the game has two phases : a statical and strategical phase, in which the players dispose their pieces, and a dynamical and action phase, in which takes place the flashy following game.
Less successful Perversions have been the one that assigns to each player four random cell coordinates that he must reach with four pieces to win, and the one that assigns to each player two cards that gives him the right to do, only one time, special moves depending on that cards.

A single set of pieces to each one is no more enough: some players begin to build up a second set of pieces.
Alessio forges his second set with melted lead, Sergio uses some painted D&D miniatures, Paolo uses some little plastic puppets.

Recently Sergio propose the chronologically last Bastardo Perversion: Bastardo for President. Each player casts a card by lot, and keeps it secret. That card says which of his pieces is the President. In this Perversion it is the President, not necessarily the King, the piece that opponents have to take to win. Since the President is incognito, the game is really keeping pleasant (or unpleasant) surprises!