"Strategy Chess" game idea

This post is to describe a variation of chess that can be played by two people. As you undoubtedly know, chess is a fun, turn-based game, but it's a perfect information game which means to win you absolutely need to best your opponent intellectually. Suffice it to say, this aspect of chess makes it a big turn-off for most people. Therefore, this might be considered an improvement because an element of imperfect information helps keep things even for less experienced players. Make no mistake... these rules are (to the best of my knowledge) of my own invention and I have not fully tested them out. I call it Strategess.

So... let's start by laying out the starting positions for the pieces. P is Pawn. R is Rook. B is Bishop. N is kNight. Q is Queen. K is King. And O is bOmb. The bomb is not a traditional chess piece. The other pieces are included in any basic chess set... though P, K, and Q do NOT move as they would in traditional chess. Here's the starting board layout...

/-------------------------------\
| P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P |
|-------------------------------|
|   | B | R | N | N | R | B |   |
|-------------------------------|
|   |   | O | O | O | O |   |   |
|-------------------------------|
|   |   |   | Q | K |   |   |   | White side
|-------------------------------| ----------
|   |   |   | Q | K |   |   |   | Black side
|-------------------------------|
|   |   | O | O | O | O |   |   |
|-------------------------------|
|   | B | R | N | N | R | B |   |
|-------------------------------|
| P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P |
\-------------------------------/

Movement rules...

P - can move one space in any direction, including forwards, backwards, and diagonally.

B - same as normal chess - diagonal movement as long as its path isn't blocked.

R - same as normal chess - linear movement as long as its path isn't blocked.

K - same as normal chess - L-style movement from it's starting point.

O - linear and diagonal movement like a Queen in normal chess, but cannot move to an occupied space to "make a kill". This piece "kills" when another piece attacks it (both pieces are removed from the board when this occurs. An exception exists where an opponent can "diffuse" the bomb, and this is explained later.

Q - cannot advance, must always be to the left of every king on the board.

K - cannot advance, must always be to the right of every queen on the board.

Q and K - can jump over ther pieces and can move like a B, R, or N as long as the "cannot advance" rule is followed.

Winning...

In normal chess, the game ends when one player puts the other player in "Checkmate". In other words, the goal of normal chess is to capture the opponent's King. This variant is different. At the beginning of the game, each player (secretly) selects one of their pieces to be the "master piece". When the black "master piece" dies, all of the other pieces "forget" how to move and white wins. It's kind of like in Independence Day when Will Smith "uploads" the virus into the Alien Mothership and then all the "smaller" ships attacking Earth can be easily destroyed. This is where imperfect information comes into play. Obviously, each player must protect their "master piece", but to win they must figure out how to kill their opponents "master piece". This is slightly analogous to Stratego where the goal is to "Capture the Flag" except in this chess variant, the "master piece" can be used offensively.

The trick is any piece can be the "master piece", including Pawns and Bombs.

Bomb Diffusion...

Okay, so earlier I mentioned that Bombs could be diffused. This is a unique situation that occurs when the Bomb is attacked by the "master piece". When performing a diffusion, the player must reveal their attacking piece is the "master piece". Early in the game, this is probably a strategic disadvantage. Late in the game, it might be advantageous to get those dang bombs out of their so they don't block your B, R, or N pieces which function better when nasty bombs aren't in the way. A special rule is that if a player chooses a bomb as their "master piece" they lose the opportunity throughout the game to perform a diffusion on bombs that belong to the other player.

Final Thoughts...

Technically speaking, the dynamics described above seen interesting. I'm going to hopefully give this a try sometime soon. I still have to work out a way to secretly identify the "master piece" and keep track of it in a non-obvious way. My thought is a little tiny sticker stealthy affixed to the pedestal bottom at the beginning of the game. Suffice it to say... Happy Gaming!