Sovereign Chess

Sovereign Chess is a commercial chess variant designed by Mark Bates and produced by Infinite Pi Games. The game is played on a 16 × 16 board and begins with 112 pieces—a normal complement of white and black pieces (16 each), and 80 other colored pieces (8 each of 10 different colors). The colored pieces are considered “neutral” at the beginning of the game, and can not initially be moved nor captured.
The center of the board contains an arrangement of 24 colored squares (2 each in every color, including white and black), which determine control of the neutral armies. In general, these armies are used to supplement a player's original armies, and to eventually checkmate the opponent.
Board configuration.
The board is a 16x16 board that can be conceptualized in traditional rows and columns but can also be described as consisting of 8 rings. The first ring consists of the squares on the outer edge of the board (ranks 1 and 16 and files a and p), with subsequent rings moving inward. The eighth ring consists of the center four squares at h8, h9, i8, and i9.
The board contains two squares of each color represented in the game:
The pattern of squares has 180-degree symmetry so that each color is equally accessible to each player throughout the game.
At the start of the game, the board contains 112 pieces, filling the first and second rings of the board. There is a regular complement of white and black pieces between files e and l, with white on ranks 1 and 2 and black on ranks 15 and 16.
Game play.
Essentially, a two-player game starting with White versus Black, Sovereign Chess gameplay can be summarized as beginning with the utilization of "the pie rule", followed by players gaining control of other colored armies by landing on squares related to the color of the army. The use of the pie rule is used to counter first move advantages. Pawn promotion occurs within the middle 4 × 4 square.
Sovereign Chess also offers a four-person variant called "Sovereign Chess Royale". Gameplay starts with a different board game configuration than the two-player version and can utilize all four players without elimination until the game is finished.