Okay, George, you've drawn me out briefly. Thanks for the kind mention of a pair of my pieces. As minimalist short range power pieces, I think they do their job. Certainly one of my better bits of spot design in the shatranj series. For what it's worth, I continued working on the piece series in the CVwiki. Much credit [or blame] goes to David Paulowich, who spent some time discussing the basic ideas. I had to extend Betza notation to cover these rather strange pieces, and have managed a few descriptive notations of existing pieces, although it doesn't cover any of the longer ranged pieces mentioned below. http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/joe-s-strange-notation And the multiply-leaping dabbabah with optional turn on last step I've been calling a daisy, as it has a stalk of varied length and a differentiated 'head'. The discussion is buried on the Pond Scum page. [Graeme was right, I should change that page name.] Anyway, allow me to copy directly from the wiki: Daisies

'A daisy is a stalked plant. Maybe the stalk is short, and maybe the stalk is long, but the stalk always grows first, then the flower can bloom at the end of the stalk.
Stalks are Dabbabahs and Alfils; they can grow any length.
Flowers are Wazirs and Ferzes, they only happen at the end of the stalk.
You may have a stalk length of zero squares, giving the pieces just the wazir or ferz move.
A stalk length of two squares gives the hero and shaman.
This piece might be nice for breaking into defended areas as its range increases.
The movement track is a saw-toothed pattern.'

David Paulowich and I were discussing a piece of this idea a while back, a 3-step dababbah-rider [a linear piece], and he was the first to suggest in print that the final step could be bent, so I promised I'd give him this much-deserved mention. I'd generalize it to 'the last leap made can be bent', and add it to my rules mix here, for sure.

You've got some options in combining daisies with the Paulowich bend.

    you can keep the 2 piece-types separate
    you can allow one piece both options, but not on the same turn
    you can allow a piece both options on the same turn - you might consider limiting the total range of this really nasty move.

1/10/08 [cont from above]

Let's start with 2 pieces, a 'matched pair' of DW and AF, along with their leaders.

The DW7 WarMachine -
This piece may move in a straight line as a dababbah 7 times;
or may move 6 times as a dababbah and once as a wazir, in a straight line.
It may move 5 times in a straight line as a dababbah, then once as a dababbah or once as a wazir, in any direction.
It may move 4 times in a straight line as a dababbah, then once as a dababbah and once as a wazir, in any [1 or 2] directions.

Another option would allow the piece to choose a wazir move at any [or every] step of its move.
Clearly, you could alter movement specs - just for example, anyone would be able to figure out what a DW6 or DW8 was, and how it worked.

The AF7 WarElephant is the diagonal equivalent of the orthogonal WarMachine, jumping 2 squares diagonally as an alfil or stepping 1 square diagonally as a ferz, and getting 'the Bends' with the same costs and restrictions as the warmachine. The move as ferz any or every step is also the same.

The DWAF7 General is the leader unit. It also moves up to 7 steps, as either the WarMachine or WarElephant, above, with these exceptions.
It has no movement penalty for making its 2 'bent' moves, it may always move up to 7 steps.
It may, in place of a standard 'bent' step, switch movement modes: if it was moving as a DW, it may move once [or twice] as an AF, and vice-versa.