Sam Trenholme wrote on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 05:21 PM UTC:
My initial impression of these bifurcation pieces was that they are too complicated. As shown by Muller’s and my own confusion about the pieces, with both of us having years of experience looking at Chess variants, I think these pieces are too complicated to get widely played. And, indeed, I don’t think there have been any games played with these pieces on Game Courier.
What I see with pieces like this is that all of the simple pieces a Chess-like game can have are already invented, and that we’re having to come up with some pretty convoluted moves to come up with new piece types.
It’s possible, of course, to combine leapers and sliders (Can you say “Capablanca Chess”?), but the only combined leapers + sliders in a national game are Shogi’s promoted rooks and bishops. There are also “riders”, sliders whose 1-move “atom” is not to an adjacent square; the knightrider is the most famous piece of this type.
Once we move past these simple pieces, things get complicated and the learning curve goes up. One relatively simple piece is a piece that captures differently than it moves; a piece that, say, moves like a knight or captures like a bishop.
Betza covered the “crooked rook”, “crooked bishop”, and “rose”—sliders which change their direction every square they slide.
Chinese Chess, of course, has the “Cannon”, which has inspired all kinds of pieces that leap before moving or capturing (or a combination thereof). Speaking of leaping pieces, I’m surprised no one has recently discussed having a checker’s king in Chess: A piece that moves like a Ferz, but captures by jumping over an adjacent piece, and can (optionally) capture multiple times in its move. We can, of course, have a wazir (horizontal and vertical) form of this piece, or combine it with any other chess piece.
So, yeah, it looks like pretty much any kind of piece chess can have with a simple move has been discussed here, so we’re moving on to complicated pieces that don’t seem very intuitive to me.
What I see with pieces like this is that all of the simple pieces a Chess-like game can have are already invented, and that we’re having to come up with some pretty convoluted moves to come up with new piece types.
The simple Chess pieces seem to be:
- Simple leapers (Such as the knight and the king) I wrote, a couple of years ago, an essay describing 31 such leapers
- Simple sliders, such as rooks, bishops, and queens. There are, as I recently posted, 16 symmetrical sliders that can traverse the entire board if the board is a bounded square; there is also the bishop and Shogi’s lance
It’s possible, of course, to combine leapers and sliders (Can you say “Capablanca Chess”?), but the only combined leapers + sliders in a national game are Shogi’s promoted rooks and bishops. There are also “riders”, sliders whose 1-move “atom” is not to an adjacent square; the knightrider is the most famous piece of this type.Once we move past these simple pieces, things get complicated and the learning curve goes up. One relatively simple piece is a piece that captures differently than it moves; a piece that, say, moves like a knight or captures like a bishop.
Betza covered the “crooked rook”, “crooked bishop”, and “rose”—sliders which change their direction every square they slide.
Chinese Chess, of course, has the “Cannon”, which has inspired all kinds of pieces that leap before moving or capturing (or a combination thereof). Speaking of leaping pieces, I’m surprised no one has recently discussed having a checker’s king in Chess: A piece that moves like a Ferz, but captures by jumping over an adjacent piece, and can (optionally) capture multiple times in its move. We can, of course, have a wazir (horizontal and vertical) form of this piece, or combine it with any other chess piece.
So, yeah, it looks like pretty much any kind of piece chess can have with a simple move has been discussed here, so we’re moving on to complicated pieces that don’t seem very intuitive to me.