Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
There is a fairy piece called the "Dragon", combining the movements of the Knight and the Pawn. However the Pawn movements are in a forward direction only. If it has not moved yet, the Dragon gets a two-step forward movement possibility (with an associated vulnerability to an en passant capture).
Another close (but not exact) match is the Eohippos (German Urpferdchen) from 10 directional chess (see http://www.chessvariants.com/contests/10/10_directional.html ). It moves and captures the same way, not in a pawnish style.
The Knight-Fers compound (NF) is also often seen under many different names, my favourite name is Dullahan (a male counterpart to a Banshee, featured under this name in the "Fearful Fairies" http://www.chessvariants.com/invention/fearful-fairies – other names include "prince" (problemist usage) or "Priest" (Scirocco, http://www.chessvariants.com/invention/scirocco )).
The Squire Knight is a definitely a Rook-class piece with 4 new capturing moves and 2 new non-capturing moves. Experience shows that additional capturing moves are worth more than additional non-capturing moves. The Squire Knight has 12 targets to aim at ... quite impressive.
I am pretty sure that Squire Knight makes an enjoyable and easy-to-learn chess variant.
Thank you all for comments and precisions on existing similar fairy pieces.
I had this it play against itself on ZOG and the mighty knights have a tendency to suppress each other quite soon in the game !
4 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.
On a standard 8x8 board, the knight and bishop are already very close in material value, so I'm not sure that this new rule would be welcomed by many players. Perhaps the uncertainty of its value would make the game interesting to some. Somewhere on the level of a rook or close to it?
I will add, however, that a "squire knight" would probably work very well on some of the large board variants to give knights more power and purpose.