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Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Mar 10, 2018 05:49 PM UTC:

Thanks for the advice Aurelian (and Greg). I'm still weighing it.. I know that Fergus used knights, still, on the even bigger 12x12 Gross Chess' board (though that game had lots of other pieces), and many times they have been used on 10x10. There are very few 12x10 variants in the database, so hard to compare the design to any such others! By my own way of weighing things, a knight is as about as close to being a competitive minor piece on 12x10 in one way (being a bit weaker than the other minors on average, perhaps) as some sort of an augmented knight (as suggested) would be in another way (being a bit stronger than the other minors on average).

If I accept the idea of using an augmented knight instead of a knight on 12x10 (attractive in one way since a nightrider already has a pure knight move, and then some) there are pros and cons to augmenting it either way suggested, i.e. either with a ferz or a wazir component, and it's not clear which way makes more sense, so perhaps it's a matter of taste. There is the 'theme' of using a ferz component to compliment the WADs wazir component, but it's also a theme just to use a knight,, to keep the 'pure FIDE pieces all used' idea; Greg's point of a (ferz-) augmented knight being capable of triangulating should not be taken too lightly either, as the whole idea of augmenting is to arguably improve the piece, rather than keep it pretty by sticking to some sort of artistic theme. A lot to agonize about here, in deciding on the final design. :) I hope no matter what I decide, I'll give that design a fair chance of becoming 'popular', perhaps even much later, even outside of the internet.

[edit: I've thought of a somewhat contorted way (given this is fairy chess, after all) to try to better justify (at least in my own mind) adopting Aurelian's suggestion of a ferz-knight compound in place of each knight in the setup, perhaps a justification that might make everyone happy (famous last words...). That is, a nightrider is a knight-like piece that cannot triangulate [edit: actually, it can!], while a ferz-knight piece is a knight-like piece that can, so they kind of complement each other. Thus, using instead (or adding also, if that were possible) a wazir-knight piece might not be seen as so desirable, for an additional artistic, if not also practical, reason than Aurelian wrote to Greg about. There's also the question in my mind as to why a ferz-knight piece should ever be used at all, if triangulating ability is always a practical drawback for a knight-like piece being used in any variant, and I'd hazard to guess that at least for some variants and their setups, a ferz-knight piece does have the right to exist. So, now I'll really have to study Aurelian's setup change idea even more. Note that in each of the two 12x10 variants in the database that I can find content for, knights (plus all the rest of the FIDE armies) are used, however, and one of these uses just 24 units per side in the setup.]


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