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This page would greatly benefit from having a setup image, as well as actual diagrams in place of the ASCII Art. Here are some tools to help with that:

Diagram Designer for Chessvariants.com

Musketeer Chess Board Painter

H. G. Muller's Interactive Diagrams (Has the bonus of being able to move the pieces)

ASCII Art is considered outdated by most.

'Japanese Rook' here means 'Lance'? Better say 'Shogi Lance' then, as people that do not know Shogi would certainly have no clue what 'Japanese Rook' means. Or better yet, say 'forward Rook', so that everyone knows what it means.

I wonder about the balance. Zebra is significantly weaker than Knight on 8x8, but that is because it is so clumsy, and gets easily trapped because most of its move fall off-board. But as a compound with stepping moves I am not so sure. The steps restore good manouevrability, and the Zebra moves can be very dangerous because of their long reach, which allows them to attack behind Pawns without getting in their reach. The Charging Knight (fhNbsWbF) is significantly stronger than a Knight, and the Charging Zebra might be similar or even better.

I wonder about the balance. Zebra is significantly weaker than Knight on 8x8, but that is because it is so clumsy, and gets easily trapped because most of its move fall off-board. But as a compound with stepping moves I am not so sure. The steps restore good manouevrability, and the Zebra moves can be very dangerous because of their long reach, which allows them to attack behind Pawns without getting in their reach. The Charging Knight (fhNbsWbF) is significantly stronger than a Knight, and the Charging Zebra might be similar or even better.

(Furiously taking notes...) ;)

This page would greatly benefit from having a setup image, as well as actual diagrams in place of the ASCII Art. Here are some tools to help with that:

Given who the author is, I'm quite surprised that there wasn't one from the get-go.

In a preliminary test with Fairy-Max (using the piece values of the Nutty Knights army) the Zen Zebras lost 61.5-38.5 from FIDE. While most of the armies beat FIDE by such an amount. I am now running some matches with 2-for-2 substitutions of the individual piece types, to see which piece is the weakling.

I now ran some matches with the individual Zen-Zebra pieces against their FIDE counter-parts, in a FIDE context. Only the Charging Zebra was able to beat the Bishop pair, with a moderate 54.5% score over 199 games (where the statistical error should be 2.8%). Such a score corresponds to a quarter of a Pawn, and that for a pair of pieces.

The other Zen pieces lost, sometimes badly. The FIDE Rooks won with a 66% score, about the same as Pawn odds, suggesting they are each 0.5 Pawn better than their replacements. The Knights won by 56.5% over 100 games (4% error), which translates to a 0.15 Pawn superiority of a single Knight. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly the Queen replacement did very bad: the FIDE Queen won with a 59% score, slightly over half a Pawn, and that for only a single replacement.

This is all very tentative, as I only run the tests with white suffering the replacements (which normally should have given them the advantage), and I did run all games from the same initial position, and did not check for duplicat games. But is seems especially the Rook and Queen replacements fall short of their target.

So it seems the Zebra moves, despite their large leap, are not dangerous enough to compensate for the fact that they more often fall off board. It could also be that the asymmetry of the Z moves in the Zen pieces disadvantages them. It enables them to raid deeply into enemy territory, but they then cannot get out the way they came, and might be trapped there. This desrves an investigation, e.g. by testing FffsbZ (asymmetric) against FvZ and FsZ (symmetric).

Thanks for testing my army! Seems like Zen Zebras would be more balanced if they're against my Clumsy Camels.

This army is ready for publication.

My reactions to this analysis, regarding both names and moves:

1. Pieces with such forward-biased moves as the Charging Zebra and the Forfrulqubakzeking (more on that one shortly) are ones that I'd reserve for a row of Spears, stationed behind the Pawns on a board of at least 12x12 and ready to promote like Pawns. The last part is the important distinction; they move poorly backward, so they need that boost to get out of the far rows.

1a. The Charging Zebra could become less Spear-like if the backward moves were expanded, perhaps to as much as sW3bhK4.

2. Perhaps you could balance out the team overall by replacing the Forfrulqubakzeking with a simple Malkia (QZ). Alternately, you could add steps to the backward Zebra move, to Z2 or Z3.

2a. If not, the usual practice that I've seen with pieces that move forward like one piece and backward like another is to either call it a form of Hunter (I'm not sure of the specifics of the convention in this case), or mash the first part of the name of the forward mover with the last half of the name of the backward mover. In this case, the backward mover is a King-Zebra compound, which I've dubbed the Jikilele, so if you were to run with that name putting it with the Queen like this would make it a Queekilele (which is simpler than Forfrulqubakzeking, and in my opinion more fun to say out loud.)

3. For the Bifferbuberz (and that is a fun name to say out loud), perhaps more sideways movement would help, whether as Zebra or (my preference) Rook.

4. The Ferzzreb is basically a Zebra Crab, and rather fun in that context; I do find the first name fun to say, but the second does conjure up a piece image in my mind. If you buff the other pieces as above, you might be able to get away with leaving it as-is, or you could also add sW2 or some such. Turning it into basically a Fibzif, so I look forward to seeing what H.G.'s result is with Zebra Crabs vs. Fibzifs. :)

I guess the ASCII diagrams aren't terrible. The interactive diagram helps a lot.

I guess the ASCII diagrams aren't terrible. The interactive diagram helps a lot.

I'll agree with the latter statement, at least.

I'm still not crazy about the nonsense-word names for the complex moves -- while Bifferbubberz is admittedly pretty fun to say, Forfrulqubakzeking is not. Neither evokes an image for either an icon or a 3D model. And I still think of the Ferzzreb as a Zebra Crab.

1a. Sounds too strong.
2. Piece with the fJfhK move sounds like a recipe for an instant win. fhsQKbhJJ isn't a bad idea but what's the difference between J2 & J3 if it's on 8x8?
2a. Hunter can't move horizontally.
3. Sir Bifferbuberz (sRbBfRhWfsbJ) sounds too strong.
4. When I designed this army, there used to be Fibzif but I replaced Fibjif with Ferzzreb to buff Zen Zebras because I thought Fibjif is weaker since it can't triangulate.

The author, HaruN Y, has updated this page.