Bob Greenwade wrote on Mon, Oct 2, 2023 12:08 PM UTC:
77. Anti-Pawn. It's been a while since I featured a pawn for the Piece of the Day; whether this fits the category is a matter of opinion.
This could also be called the Un-Pawn, Counter-Pawn, or Backward Pawn. It moves like a standard Pawn, but backward only: one orthogonal move backward, or capturing one diagonal move backward.
The player never starts with an Anti-Pawn; rather, a forward-moving pawn (or spear, or other forward-moving piece) reaches a promotion zone, and promotes to it, so it can "advance" from the far end of the board back toward the player. Once the Anti-Pawn reaches the first row (or, if you prefer, the Pawn Row), it then promotes again, this time to something much more powerful (such as a Japanese Lion, Tengu, Sphinx, Sabertoothrider, or such). After all, it just traversed the board twice without getting captured; some type of extra-special reward should be in place.
As for the appearance, I just figured that if a standard Pawn had a sphere on top, the Anti-Pawn should have a cube. There's no getting them mixed up that way!
77. Anti-Pawn. It's been a while since I featured a pawn for the Piece of the Day; whether this fits the category is a matter of opinion.
This could also be called the Un-Pawn, Counter-Pawn, or Backward Pawn. It moves like a standard Pawn, but backward only: one orthogonal move backward, or capturing one diagonal move backward.
The player never starts with an Anti-Pawn; rather, a forward-moving pawn (or spear, or other forward-moving piece) reaches a promotion zone, and promotes to it, so it can "advance" from the far end of the board back toward the player. Once the Anti-Pawn reaches the first row (or, if you prefer, the Pawn Row), it then promotes again, this time to something much more powerful (such as a Japanese Lion, Tengu, Sphinx, Sabertoothrider, or such). After all, it just traversed the board twice without getting captured; some type of extra-special reward should be in place.
As for the appearance, I just figured that if a standard Pawn had a sphere on top, the Anti-Pawn should have a cube. There's no getting them mixed up that way!