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H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jun 20 09:19 PM UTC:

I made a modified version of Fairy-Max where hoppers capture the piece they hop over (and cannot hop over friends). This allowed me to test the Killer Kangaroo and similar pieces. The tests replaced the Queens in the FIDDE setup by the pieces I wanted to measure the value difference of, and involved 200-260 games for each imbalance. Most of the time I used the Dragon King RF as opponent to a locust hopper; in earlier tests the value of this pieces came out as 700 centi-Pawn.

The weakest locust I tested was the mQ[cQ-mK], which has to land immediately behind the piece it captures. This was half a Pawn weaker than RF, so 650cP. Making the capture more Cannon-like (rather than Grasshopper-like), i.e. mQ[cQ-mQ] made it as strong as RF to within the precision of the measurement. This piece could be called a Long Monoleaper, as it is a version of the Ultima Long Leaper restricted to capturing only a single piece. (Fairy-Max still could not do multiple locust captures.)

I don't like these pieces very much, as they have great difficulty attacking edge squares, and cannot attack corners at all. Others have percieved this as a problem too, leading to variant designs with an extra rim around the board just for the hop locusts to land on, with various rules on how they should get back onto the main board accesible to the other pieces. I consider that an awkward solution.

This is why I equiped the Killer Kangaroo with an additional replacement capture to edge squares (where the next step of the slide would bring them off board): mQ[cQ-mK][pQ-oK-bcK]. That makes it much more valuable, as it can now attack the enemy back rank (where most enemy pieces are) from its own board half. The result was that it clobbered the RF with a 69.5% score, where Pawn odds typically leads to 65-68%.victories, so an advantage of 120-133cP. To get a better fix on the value I am now testing it against an Archbishop instead of a Dragon King. Tests are still running, but the score seems only slightly in favor of the BN (around 56%), suggesting a 40cP advantage. Since the value I found for BN (on the scale where Q=950) is 875, that nicely matches the result against RF, suggesting a value of 833 for the Killer Kangaroo.

A mgQcQ3 Cricket tested as 50-66cP stronger than a Rook. So an army incorporating these can have a somewhat weak super-piece, and the Killer Kangaroo, being ~120cP weaker than Q, would be a very suitable choice.

A Lame Templar (Moa-Lame Dabbaba, nD[f-W]) tested as slightly weaker than half a Bishop pair (the latter valuing 700 on the Kaufman scale), so about 333cP, where a Knight (or lone Bishop) has value 325. Tomorrow I will do the Chinese Cannon, and if that is worth about a Bishop we should have a well-balanced Happy-Hoppers army that I can test as a whole.


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