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Bob Greenwade wrote on Tue, Mar 5, 2024 05:30 PM UTC:

230. Raven. and 231. Unicorn. I had been going to post a new piece last night after returning home from Seattle, but delays* stopped me from doing so. Therefore, I'm posting a pair that I have on file, that doesn't require a lot of work on my part... though I do have an interesting pair in mind that I'll be putting up this weekend. These here are both quite familiar to most of you, so I fully expect to be called out on any errors (which is perfectly OK).

The Raven is, of course, a Rook/Nightrider hybrid, sliding orthogonally or making (1,2) leaps in a straight line. (RNN)

The Raven is also known as a Waran, the common name in other languages for what English speakers generally know as the monitor lizard.

The Raven's rotary counterpart is the Unicorn, also called the Banshee, a Bishop/Nightrider compound. It also makes a series of (1,2) leaps in a straight line, but instead of sliding orthogonally it slides diagonally.

There are actually several pieces called Unicorn here and there, but this is the one I usually think of. (It's not the only one I use, of course.)

I'm fairly happy with the Unicorn model, but less so the Raven. I wasn't sure what else to do at the time I made it... and I'm only a little better now.

*Suffice it to say that, instead of my anticipated time of getting home at 8:30pm, I actually arrived after 12:30am.


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