Comments by BobGreenwade

I do wonder that there's no article here on the Amazonrider (aka Queen of the Night, though I personally prefer Centauride or Virtuoso).

Or at least a mention here, or on the Nightrider page.

I tried this out, and it works that way for me. The m in your string means it wouldn't be able to capture, though; was that your intent?

25 years later, and as far as I can tell, still nobody's tried putting a Friend into an actual game.

That may change soon enough; I find the piece intriguing -- intriguing enough that I designed a piece on Thingiverse, as part of this collection, and my brain is cooking up something for it (though I already have four unpublished submissions on the site, and two or three more ready to post when I can).

I wonder, though, if a Friend can pass on moves to another Friend....

For my own part, I'm having a little trouble with two pieces that I can't quite figure out.

1. A piece that I'm alternately calling the Springer, Bouncer, Leapfrog, or Tigger. It jumps onto a piece in a neighboring square (without whose help it cannot move), and from there makes a Queen's move.

2. The Friend, which seems to me should be somehow doable with the I atom, though that looks like it (the I atom) may be too restricted. (I suspect that that's what the proposed M atom is for.)

I've seen them. Nice work.

Intriguing idea, Aurelian. Maybe once we can get the Friend coded in?

Meanwhile, I'm contemplating a back row with one each King, Queen, Candlestick, Knife, Lead Pipe, Revolver, Rope, and Wrench. I haven't quite figured out the XBetza for those last six yet; my intent can be found here. (I hope to build a full-fledged mashup some time in the future.) I have a suspicion that my descriptions may unnecessarily overpower the FIDE set. (Maybe a Wazir instead of a Queen?)

PS: I'm quite fond of the Lame Duck and Half-Duck from the Sliders set, and the Dragon Fly from the Dragons.

Yeah, I'm hoping it doesn't take too long to get at least one or two of my games approved, so I can start posting this "Friendly Game of Chess."

I'm thinking of using a huge board (20x16?) with 2-4 Friends per side, otherwise loading both up with riders, bent sliders, long leapers, rifle capturers, and other pieces with crazy powers (like the Bodyguard). That, I think, would lead to some really crazy matches.

PS: My answer to your question of Orphan/Friend interaction is: both. An Orphan protecting a Friend, or a Friend attacking an Orphan, would pass on both its own abilities and those that it's borrowing.

I rather like these, especially the Top Heart and Bottom Heart.

If you want to break the colorbound nature, what if you were to make the Bottom Heart's moves orthogonal instead of diagonal? It's furthest range would be a Knight's move instead of a Camel's, but it could reach every square on the board. (Or, you could use this idea to replace one of the other hearts.)

PS: Try Musketeer's Board Painter and see how it suits you for making diagrams.

BTW, mating positions do exist for Royal Lion and Amazon vs. Royal Lion, but I'm not sure mate can be forced.

Referring, of course, to checkmate.

I'll agree (though not vehemently) with the assessment that the 8x8 parts are basically Chess With Different Armies. But the 9x9 parts are their own variant, and arguably deserve their own page.

I also agree that this needs a better name; I found this while looking for an article to explain the drop rule.

But the only real complaint I have is the lack of any diagrams to show what order the back-row pieces are set up in; on that point I don't have a clue. Diagrams showing the various Pawns' moves would be helpful too.

Most of my critiques are from the perspective of a writer/proofreeder, with an eye to making this easy to read and understand, though there are a couple of thoughts here from a prospective player (which I am; I think this looks like something worth playing).

So I'll start with what'll probably seem like a nitpick: "flipped" has two P's. (I only see one time where you get this right.)

For the Setup, I'm not sure what the purpose is for the two different views, though I will say that I like the second one (with the neutral pieces in grey) better. I'd recommend listing the Peacemaker and Watchers as a completely separate section (Black, White, Grey).

I'm also not sure why the Treasurer has a lion icon, though I certainly do understand how it can be hard oftentimes to find an appropriate icon for a new piece.

Actual nitpick: All the chess rules apply except that Castling is not used. (Player's perspective: Why not?)

Each of the four new pieces (Heavy Knight, Peacemaker, Treasurer, and Warden) should have a subsection, with a header, describing all of the rules pertaining to it. That includes moving all such text from the Rules sectioin to there.

The Heavy Knight is basically the piece more often called a Centaur, Counselor, or Crowned Knight. Noting that here (including the link) would be helpful for veterans, and a move diagram would be helpful for newbies.

The hardest part to understand is how the Treasurer captures. It seems to be left as implied  that it does it by moving next to the target piece and performing a rifle capture, but I'm not clear on whether that happens immediately or as a separate move. And if it's a rifle capture, there seems to me to be no need to move the converted target. If the target is moved, then it would seem simpler to drop it onto the starting space (or a starting space) for the piece on its new team.

Since all the other pieces apparently capture by displacement (as usual), the suggestion for moving to the starting space might apply to captured Treasurers.

Another simplification for the Treasurer would be that Treasurers are simply immune to each other's influence. The Immobilization seems to me like an unnecessary complication. (Alternately, they could convert each other instantly, effectively switching places.)

A physical description of the Watchers, for those playing with physical pieces, would be good. My impression is that they'd be a set of disks, probably grey, with something on the underside stating what piece they act as once they enter play. A subsection under Notes could even be a brief "how--to" on making them.

The bit about a player declining (a better word, I think, than "refusing") the second turn is best put right after that turn is mentioned.

The Peacemaker's inspiration from Duck Chess (including a link) would be welcome in the Notes. Another thing for notes (besides that and the above-mentioned "how-to") would be advice to have a full extra set on hand (minus Kings, but plus two Peacemakers) to drop in place of converted Watchers, plus maybe a few extras for Pawn promotion.

Mostly for reference, the atoms not currently in use are E, M, S, T, and V (a shorter list than I thought).

Originally, that was going to be purely for reference; but with that list being so unexpectedly short, I support using the M atom for "Mirror" as proposed, but seeing if there's a way to expand it so it could be used to take the moves of adjacent pieces, of pieces that could be reached by the move of a certain piece or pieces (King being the default), etc.

And maybe S could somehow be set aside for Special abilities like immobilizing, slowing (as with the Hia/Bodyguard), or other passive properties (implementation TBD).

I've been seeing Mirko Mirko use the Comments section of their profile to post Interactive Diagrams.

I'm thinking of doing the same with some of my original pieces, at least the ones I haven't put into a game yet.

Ouch. Somehow I thought it was simpler than that. Perhaps a case study (in this case, the title piece from Tiger Chess, though I'm also fond of the same game's Astrologer) would be in order.

I really like this! The "leap-and-slide" pieces take "ski" moves to a new dimension, and are quite innovative (at least, I don't know of any earlier incidents of that; but then again I'm a relative newbie at CVs). I probably will "borrow" the Tiger and/or Astrologer for a future variant (I've even gone so far as to design pieces for them on Thingiverse).

1. Magus. When there is a Wizard, it's usually with a move of FC. Unlike most other symmetrical-move pieces, though, it doesn't have a rotated counterpart -- until now. The Magus' WZ move matches the Wizard's, rotated 45 degrees.

As for the word magus, it's not only a common synonym of "wizard," but also refers to a Zoroastrian priest, which helps the name stay in line with the clergical theme of diagonal movers.

For the appearance of the piece, I found several images showing ancient and modern looks for the Zoroastrian magus, and combined them into something unique (on the chessboard, anyway).

The more elegant bracket notation [Z?B] is ambiguous, because it is not clear what 'forward' is for a diagonal step after a Z leap.

Afterthought: I'd think of "forward" from a hippogonal move as being parallel to the nearest orthogonal line (or, for a diagonal move, the nearest diagonal line).

I may just find that book. I'd already been contemplating it; this is just a little more impetus. :) (My main barrier is the price; I'm somewhat low-income.)

I knew I'd seen a Sorcerer somewhere, but couldn't find it and thought it had something more complex than WZ.

That said, a few others that I plan to post are deliberately "my version" of something that exists, and I think that the Magus probably has a fresh theme cf. Sorcerer.