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This is not correct. My Brigadier is *not* the same as the 'Super
General' in Supremo Superchess. The Brigadier moves and captures like a
Queen but can also *capture* an enemy if there is another piece in between, 
and any interim squares are empty.

However, in Supremo Superchess the 'Super General' can also jump
*without capturing*. This makes an immense difference. The Super
General's movement freedom is overwhelming, while the Brigadier's
movement is much more restricted. So the Brigadier is not the same as
Mr. Howe's unpublished Optima and Nova, either, as these, allegedly,
use the Super General moves.

Moreover, the Brigadier is a very useful piece. I, too, have discarded
several piece inventions, but the Brigadier was found to work very well. I
have implemented it in Zillions and tested it in several computer-computer
games. It was found not to be overwhelmingly powerful, and the activity of
the pieces remained distributed between the different pieces, i.e., the
Brigadier did not move around too much.

It's not possible to go between to protect a piece that is directly
threatened by a Brigadier (because the Brigadier can capture by jumping).
But this doesn't matter much because, while the Brigadier is so valuable,
all pieces, except the king, can stay put if directly threatened by the
Brigadier. A king standing on the same diagonal/orthogonal as an enemy
Brigadier needs two pieces between itself and the enemy Brigadier to be
protected. This is not hard to accomplish since the highly movable
friendly Brigadier can be used as defensive piece. 

As to Fergus's 'uninvented' Tank and Bazooka: pieces must be properly
tested, I think, before deciding whether they work. Moreover, such pieces
could, after all, be blocked by a Bodyguard, which can stymie piece
movement. So it also depends on the context if they can be used.

Andy, I have never experimented with 'different armies' chess variants,
although I always use this concept when testing the strength of new
pieces. Pitting Amazons against Brigadiers is an interesting concept,
which you could try to implement in some form.  /Mats