On Maharaja and the Sepoys (aka Maharajah Chess)

Maharaja and the Sepoys (Maharajah Chess on Brainking.com) is a variant in which a regular chess army is fighting against a royal Q + N moving piece (= maharaja). Pawns do not promote, and the aim is checkmating the opponent's royal piece (white's maharajah or black's king). This is not a real variant in the sense that black, with proper play, always wins.

On Chessvariants.com it says "A carefully playing black player should be able to win. However, this is not always easy, and in many cases, when the white `Maharaja' breaks though the lines of black, he has good chances to win." I will try to show the way black has to play to win. The black player was sacha in the actual game, so the credit for the method goes to him. (It should also be noted that this is not the only nor the best method for black's win.)

Phase 1: Open up the center, develop the knights:



Phase 2: d4 and e4 knights, and the 5th line pawn wall:



Phase 3: King's side pawns on 4th row, bishops on d6 and e6:



Phase 5: Play c4, transfer the black squared bishop and the queen via c5 into maharaja's territory:



Here the red circled squares are the safe squares for maharaja. Next, black will drive the maharaja to f, g, h columns by threatening it with the queen. Then black will play Qc1, limiting maharaja to g2 and h2 and mate it by moving h3 and g3 in proper order. Which ends the proof.

To add more challenge to the game, one could give the maharaja ability to move to any square on the board once in the game (à la castling in regular chess, just a move in a bigger scale). I am not sure if black would still be able to win if that was the rule.