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Carnival of the Animals. A nearly-FIDE variant with Eurofighter Pawns (first implementation on an 8x8 board) dice (two aside for preference) which mutate. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Michael Nelson wrote on Tue, Jun 21, 2005 05:28 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

A fine design. The strong Pawns and the random variablity of the Knights
will produced a a slashing, highly tactical game. Piece values will be
skewed--it will virtually always pay to trade Bishop for Knight, not
infrequently Rook for Knight will work.

A variant worth looking at would be to treat a 5 as 0--this eliminates
some of the longest leapers and brings the Wazir and Dababbah-type leapers
into the game.

A note on dice probabilites: The chance of rolling exactly one 6 on a pair
of dice is 10/36 or 5/18, not the 1/18 chance cited on the page.

Charles Gilman wrote on Tue, Jun 21, 2005 06:27 AM UTC:

Thanks for the comments. I have added some clarifications as regards the
probabilities, and also as to when the choice of leaper is made - it is
before the opponent moves, in case anyone thought that rolling at least
one 6 resulted in a compound piece, which it doesn't. 1 in 18 is correct
for EACH combination of 6 and another number, and as there are 5 other
numbers the total is indeed 5 in 18. Here is a table of the relative
probabillities of a fixed oblique leaper (O), a fixed diagonal one (D), a
choice between four oblique and one diagonal (C), and a choice of any
(A):
DOOOOC
ODOOOC
OODOOC
OOODOC
OOOODC
CCCCCA
I considered treating 6 as 0 to bring in the Wazir, Dabbaba &c, but
thought that giving the players an element of choice would be more fun.
Having devised names for the 5:x leapers I thought it a waste not to have
a variant making use of such pieces.

Flowerman wrote on Wed, Mar 17, 2010 06:38 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

Good, but i have one question: when moving like Shogi, can piece else than pawn promote to Queen, is pawn forced to promote ONLY to queen, where it promotes when moving like Shogi and Makruk, and can pawns promote when moving like Xiang-qi, and if it can't, what to do with it, when it reached last rank while moving like Xiang-qi?

💡📝Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 07:16 PM UTC:

That's a very good question. I'll have to think about it and update the page.

Flowerman wrote on Sun, Mar 21, 2010 06:28 PM UTC:

Also, can bishop go to another half of board when moving like in Xiang-qi? I suppose that there is no palace, but what about bare facing?

💡📝Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Mar 22, 2010 08:38 AM UTC:

I've already got that one - it says 'without River'. that means that Bishops moving as Elephants can go to both halves of the board.

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