Comments by BobGreenwade

Yes, I had to make room, though if you need it I can add it back.

I wish that is changed one day, I don't like to see my name associated to these, it is not something I like.

I can remove them if you want, but several are quite useful and even well done. Your Elephant is one of the better ones of the set; the Queen and Pawn have an interesting look; the General and Governor are exquisite, and your Cardinal and Marshal almost as good; I want to use your Wizard to represent the Harvester; and (over in Part 2) your Lions hold up nicely to the others, and I prefer your Falcon and Griffin to the Alfaerie. Everything else is a decent alternative; in fact, I've seriously considered asking you to create some more to help fill things out (like Zebra, Bear, Okapi, and Centaur).

PS: Besides all that... have you seen the animals in the Utrecht set???

My thoughts:

Absorber Chess is probably too close to Absorption Chess; Cannibal Chess is likewise taken. But you've probably already considered those, and others like them.

Power Eaters, perhaps?

By the way, the Metropolitan name is already taken, by a Bishop+Gryphon piece. Would something like Disciple, Evangelist, or Apostle work? (I like Evangelist best of these, as it applies to a religious "harvester" of sorts.) I really like the other two, though, especially the Battlemaster.

Incidentally, can your game have triple compounds? If so, I've already named the Gnu+Bishop as the Sangoma (a religious figure in southern Africa, where the gnu is native); the rest I leave in your hands.

I did grab all of the SVG images I could find, and they will be Part 5 (or maybe a separate collection unto themselves).

I can find the Utrecht images; I just neglected to download those two (and a few others as well).

As for pieces that aren't in any of the SVG collections, I'll discuss on the page they're going on when I create it.

But thanks for the information on the caching; there are too many to put that tag on every one, but at least I know that the replacement doable. (I really screwed up on the Utrecht black bishop, for one thing.)

101. West Wind. This is another interesting piece from Adran King's fertile mind. Its move is actually much simpler than one might thing: it slides right like a Rook or Bishop; directly forward or backward up to three spaces; or leaps like a Knight's leftmost moves. (rRrBvW3lN)

For the physical piece, I opted for looks somewhat like a room fan or wind funnel I once saw when my age had just one digit, set to be pointed to the player's right (the large end is where the air came out of that funnel). The arrow keeps the piece pointed in the right direction.

@Lev: Sorry I couldn't get your Torch piece up here today. I'll try to have it Monday.

The quad compound would be so singular that, based on what I can find on Zulu mythology, I'd want to call it Inkosazana.

102. East Wind. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that, if yesterday's piece was the West Wind, today's would be the East Wind. In Adrian King's original take, the East Wind's moves to the right are a single orthogonal step or a (1,3) leap, but I prefer symmetry, so I use the mirror of the West Wind. (lRlBvW3rN)

These are pieces that I could see on a large-board game (especially 16x16), set a couple of spaces in from their respective sides. The asymmetry of their individual moves give a shogi-like quality (which I'm pretty sure was Mr. King's intent), while mutual symmetry gives them some strength among some of the more powerful variant chess pieces.

And of course the physical piece design is also a mirror image of the West.

@H.G.: There seems to be something wrong with my Vanguard game. I'm not sure whether it's my coding or yours, but I'm getting the list of legal moves, and the rifle capture I'm trying to do isn't among them; it's not letting me do my move.

I've thought about it, though you have the North Wind and South Wind backward (the direction is where the wind comes from, not where it's going).

That said, I still have a lot of stuff to do here before I can add more games to my roster.

My Archer at h12 should be able to shoot the Sergeant at i10.

(I did previously use my Bowman currently at m9 to capture a Pawn at n7, so at least that part works.)

I've already gotten a few ideas. I have visions of a 15x15 board, four rows of pieces per side, with the East Wind at c3, the West Wind at m3, the North Wind at i3, and the South Wind at i2 (with rotational symmetry, of course). A week and a half ago ago I also featured the Blue Gecko and Purple Finch (#89-90), and I'd definitely have those at the ends of the third row. The rest of the third row would include Arabian Spears, Berolina Spears, Vivi, Major and Minor Annoyances, and maybe Archers. A variety of Pawns in front (Standard, Berolina, Mongolian, Scorpion, maybe even Knight or Moose); second row full of good mid-range pieces (of course including Bodyguards and Okapis); and powerful sliders (like the also-recent Exorcist and Tax Collector, and the Midnighter from early on) helping out the back.

Actually, what I was initially thinking of didn't have the North and South Winds, and was on a 16x16 board, and would probably have some deliberately bizarre, esoteric name.

and perhaps even more oddly the Boat (possibly among others) seems to be missing. I'm very curious where these came from

There are many icons in all sets that haven't been posted yet. Ships and such will be in Part 3, for example.

As for where they came from, I stumbled across https://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/alfaeriemisc/ a while ago, and soon after found https://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/utrecht/; H.G. more recently pointed me to https://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/utrechtPNG/. That, the main Chess Variant Graphics page, and the table on the Play-Test Applet are my main sources.

That said, I'm excited to see the updated set. And 400 icons (is that 400 or only 200) would seem to me to put it second only to Alfaerie!

Several are in more than two colors, so the actual count (by my reckoning) is 157.

And I probably will keep at least some of the old ones.

103. Minor Annoyance. and 104. Major Annoyance. Speaking of these two inventions of Ralph Betza, I thought they'd be interesting as this weekend's pair. He discusses them, more or less in passing, in his article on Bent Riders, As far as I know they've never appeared in any actual chess variant... yet.

The Minor Annoyance steps one space sideways, then proceeds outward and forward like a narrow Nightrider. (sWsyyyafsW)

(The diagram only shows forward movement because of an earlier misunderstanding on my part. The same reason applies to the rest of the images here.)

The Major Annoyance has the exact same move; plus it can move one step backward, allowing the piece to reach every row rather than just every other one. (sbWsyyyafsW)

With or without the backward move, I think either (or both) of these pieces would be handy in a row of Spears -- not as the Spears, but supplementing them.

As for the physical pieces, the only difference between the two is the little Wazir's hat on the Major Annoyance, the extreme similarity only increasing how annoying they can be to both players.

The original Bishop and Rook are rough, but still usable. I could see, for example, the Rook being useful in a game themed around siege engines and bits of a castle shuffling around (Rook, Castle, Parapet, and so forth) where icons could run short, just as Part 2 implies possibilities for armies consisting entirely of Lions or Elephants.

Two minor items:

1. I look forward to seeing an Interactive Diagram for this. I'd love to play it against the AI.

2. Bn Em can probably answer this: does the Harvestman have a rotary counterpart?

Time for me to fix that ID on the game, too, I think.

Thanks for that, Haru! :) I was trying to figure out what the rotary counterpart would be for the Evangelist. I still don't have a good name (what'd be the secular counterpart? Agronomist?), but it's a start.

And thanks for the ID, H.G.! :)

It seems that I can only accumulate 6 unpublished variants. Then the message comes that for more variants unpublished variants must be deleted first.

I'm facing a similar difficulty, except that I haven't tried deleting any of my variants (the frustration of which I can understand). In my case I'm just waiting for the editors to get around to approving existing pages before I finish the remaining 3 pages of the Icon Clearinghouse (plus the additional SVG edition), the Vanguard Chess GC page, and other CVs I have rattling around in my skull (or, in one case, on my hard drive). Said approval can take a while, so I'm just gonna be patient.