Comments by JorgKnappen

Ralph Betza gauges his armies based on play between humans, this is an important point. Human chess masters play the FIDEs much better than the different armies, therefore there FIDEs have a bonus, and the unusual pieces have a malus. Thus Ralphs estimates are still valid for human players, unless we have grandmasters of Chess with different armies.

Some more piece names. Most of them can be found in the Schwalbe list
http://www.dieschwalbe.de/lexikon.htm or on Jerome Grimbert's site http://jgrimbert.free.fr/pieces/indexa.html

Saurians:
cK - Atlantosaurus 
cQ - Dinosaurus
cB - Brontosaurus
cN - Hippopotamus 
cR - Mammoth

Combinations with a pawn:
p+B - Griff
p+N - Dragon (german: Drache)
p+R - Ship (french: Bateau)
p+L - Lama (L is Camel in Betza notation ...)
p+D - german: Hornochse (literal translation Horned Ox, meanig Blockhead) Maybe we could call it Hornox in english?

Sea pieces:
sea-K - Poseidon
sea-Q - Sirene, Mermaid
sea-B - Nereide
sea-N - french: Hippocampe (sea horse). In fact, a sea-Moo.
sea-N - french: cavalier marine (sea knight) truly hippogonal piece, almost useless on 8x8
sea-R - Triton

Some other pieces:
The Camelrider has a special french name: Mehari
The Taxi is a pawn with an additional backward move, it can go up to 3 steps forward from the first rank.

Hi George,

I think the mating number of the quintessence is 2. Even a single
quintessence comes very close to a mate, but it cannot strike the final
blow to the enclosed King.

The idea of a re-charging piece is hidden in the Nutty Knights army from
Ralph Betza's Chess with different armies. The charging pieces there have
many forward moves, but very poor retreating moves.

A re-charging piece turns 180 degrees upon reaching the 8th rank, and
another 180 degrees upon reaching the first rank again. A Charging Rook,
e.g., becomes a Reverse Charging Rook, moving forward as a King and
backward and sideward as a Rook and the 8th rank. On promoting a pawn, you
get a re-charged piece with full retreating power and poor forwardness.

I wonder how much this change would power-up the Nutty Knights.

One can also imagine re-charging pawns, walking up and down as pawns with
no hope for promotion ...

For the physical representation, balck and white Shogi-style pieces may
work fine where colour indicates the ownership of the piece and direction
the charged state.

I don't understand how you derived the number 6 for the Spearman. In fact,
it has no backwards capture move and once the opposing King has broken the
line of Spearmen, no number of them can mate.

Maybe you want to say that a fox-and-geese style game with 6 Spearmen and a
King vs. a lone King from some initial position is won, but this something
very different.

[23] All squares are essentially equal, there is no terrain to consider.

This criterion draws a line to war simulation games, where land, water and cities play an important role.  

Xiang Qi mildly violates this one.

Wow, this is a really intresting result. Now I wonder how the Woody Rook aka Wazaba (WD compound) does in the end game against a Rook. I felt it was too clumsy in certain endgames with some pawns against a Knight and replaced it with the Phoenix aka Waffle in the Fearful Fairies army ( http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSfearfulfairies ).

Back to the terrain question: a promotion zone does not constitute terrain for me, also the forward direction of pawns is not dictated by terrain.

Holes in the the board are somewhat strange to Chess and may constitute terrain. Barriers of all kind are certainly terrain.

Possible terrain effect are: Difficult terrain (mountains, swamps) slowing units (pieces) down or forbidding some kind of pieces (two heavy to move there ...) on that terrain, land/water distinction (land units need boats or bridges to cross the water, water units cannot move on land (but maybe shoot units down on land), air planes can operate both on land and water, but need to land after some time and need airports or carriers for this purpose), cities (providing supplies fo any kind, generating new units, allowing of repair of damaged units).

This leads to another chess criterion

[24] A chess piece is either fully functional or captured, there is no such thing like 'damage' or 'health' with consequences to the piece (slower motion, need of repair, easier capturability). Of course, a bad position (e.g. pinned) does not count as damage. In FIDE chess the only (very mild) violation of the no damage rule is the loss of castling rights.

Here's my interpretation of A. Blacks criterion 17:

17. Pieces moves like chess pieces can move.

(a) Pieces move like leapers (true leapers or 'lame' leapers), riders, chinese or korean cannons, or combinations of those.

(b) Pieces have highly symmetric movement patterns (full 90 degrees rotational and reflectional symmetry for all non-pawn pieces, reflectional symmetry with different forward and backwards movement [like in the Shogi gold and silver generals] counts as a mild violation of this)

(c) Pieces move and capture the same way or their move and capture are at least 'similar' in some sense (I consider the pawn movement and capture similar because of forwardness and shortrangeness, also the pieces of separate realm chess or chinese cannons are similar in movement and capture. Frank Maus' knibis and bishight aren't). 

This allow much more pieces than just the traditional FIDEs ...

@hubert It is not about a naming police, it is about respect to what is already here from traditional and modern chess variants. And paying respect includes noting that the pieces and the names were already used before. A designer may choose to differ and make this explicit in the exposition of his or her game.

Another point addresses potential players: It makes learning a game much easier when pieces with well-known names move as expected from their names.

[25] There is Zugzwang: players with legal moves are obliged to move even if every legal move leads to defeat.

This is one of the most outstanding features of chess and its variants. Compare it to go, where no player is ever forced to deteriorate their position, they may just pass instead.

Now there is a lot of input for thought, and I may create another army based on the fairy theme ...

For aesthetical reasons I don't like a 'queens left' setup, but H. G. Muller makes a strong point to consider it nevertheless. I have to think what rules for castling to prefer (Fischer random rules or just mirrored castling).

As a replacement for the phoenix/waffle piece, another knight-strength piece is needed. Candidates are the Kylin/Diamond/Duke (FD compound) or the 3 simplest amphibians Frog {1,1}+{0,3}, Toad {0,2}+{0,3}, and Newt
{2,2}+{0,3}---all of them are very thematic, but I have to playtest how they work together. That the halfduck is feasable in CwDA suggest that the amphibians aren't too dangerous to use.

This is a good game: It is fun to play. I even like the name showing some humour.

Since Charles suggested elsewhere to drop or change this game: please let it stand here as it is. It even inspired another game (I'm a Ferz, get me into there).

All in all, this game has well thought 'game mechanics' and is worth keeping.

@Joe: The clue to my rating of the Shatranjian Shooters is the observation that a Ferfil ist worth a Knight is worth a Bishop. To my experience this is true for a single Ferfil compared to a single Bishop. A pair of short range Ferfils does not generate a feelable pair bonus, though.

The Shaman ist about 1.25 pawns above the Ferfil. The Hero is similar to the Shaman, but has a larger overall mobility, I rate it half a pawn above the Shaman. The War Elephant is like a Queen, therefore it is 1.5 pawns better than its components. This gives the following calculation:

2 Heros @4.75 Points   = 9.5 Points
2 Knights @3 Points    = 6   Points
2 Shamans @4.25 Points = 8.5 Points
1 War Elephant         @10.5 Points
===================================
Sum                     34.5 Points

compared to 32 Points for the FIDEs. I don't know whether the Shamans already have a feelable pair bonus, therefore I don't put it in.

Of course, with a jumping general (about 7.5 points) the army is on the low end of the CwDA scale. 31.5 is less than the FIDEs have. The Hero and the Shaman are very tactically dangerous pieces, specially against the FIDEs with their unprotected rooks in the back rank.

By the way, Falkener goes further back in time than expected: The Dover reprint was made from an 1892 edition!

Falkener, Edward, Games Ancient and Oriental, Dover Publications 1961 (reprint of 1892 edition)