Comments by JorgKnappen

I suggest that you take a chess board, two kings and some piece representing the rhino (a knight works well for me) and try it out.

I must admit, that I didn't analyse the specific position nnz gave here, the placement of the supporting King is a bit awkward here. Both of your proposals to repair the situation work out fine.

For similar pieces: A gnu and a king can drive the king to the edge, but cannot give mate; the same holds for the quintessence (of quintessential chess).

A maybe funny question:

What happens to a pawn when it is converted into an undead piece? Say, a white undead bishop attacks a black pawn: Does the black pawn turn into an undead white pawn or does it turn into an undead black pawn under white's control? The difference between the two is the inherited directionality: By becoming an undead white pawn the black pawn turns 180 degrees and marches against his old camp; while an undead black pawn under white's control continues to march against the white camp (and may block white pawns in their progress).

Another question: 

Can an undead piece attack a life piece of its own camp? Because this action may strengthen the piece by taking its life it might be a favourable move.

Patzer has definitely german relations, there is the verb 'verpatzen' in
german, meaning to crab, to mull, to fluff, to foozle, to snafu. I don't
know its further etymology, it is quite possible that it is either yiddish
oder rotwelsch.

David, that's a aice X-mas present for all of us!

There is one minor poiint I want to correct (it is not your fault; already Jeliss has this particular sentence wrong):

>null piece (Exotic): n. Piece that, combined with any other piece leaves it unaltered = Dummy = (0,0) leaper. Not the same as zero. Link(s): All the King's Men. [index] Source(s): [ATKM] Unique ID: [CVT-10825]

A dummy is a piece without any move; as a leaper it is an \emptyset-leaper, not a (0,0)-leaper. A (0,0)-leaper has one move to its starting square, essentially the piece-bound licence to pass a move.

This is always confounding to see that zero is something different from the emptyset.

The only measure to get solid information about the strength of a certain piece is to playtest it (in human play and/or computer play). As far as I know, there are few divergent pieces really tested.

Mike Nelson's Seperate Realms Rook comes out on a value of about 75% Rook plus 25% Dabbabarider, suggesting that capture constitues about 3/4 of the piece value, while moving alone constitutes about 25%. But this particular piece has rather similar move and capture patterns; the more the patterns diverge, the more playtesting is needed, and there is probably no simple formula describing the results.

Note also that the results of playtesting depend on the testbed: What board is choosen, what is the oppenent's army, what pieces are in the same army (sociability effects).

Some time ago, either in a published CV or in a discussion a new piece type
called 'area mover' or 'areal mover' was proposed here. It was kind of
a lame hook mover (known from large Shogi variants): It only could perform
a hook move when the whole area (defined as the rightangle spanned by the
two orthogonal rook moves) was free of intervening pieces.

I tried to google the reference, but it wasn't indexed.

Can someone remember the reference to this kind of piece?

I have an answer to your 2nd question:

The R3 is named Kongo (Guardian of Gods) in Taikyoku Shogi.

There's also a B3, named Rikishi (Wrestler) in Taikyoku Shogi.

Note that the Taikyoku Shogi pieces move differently then pieces with the
same name in other larger Shogi variants.

Here's a first pack of additions, all from the following new source:


George Jelliss: Theory of Moves, Knight's Tour Notes 2001,
http://www.ktn.freeuk.com/9a.htm

Notes are mine and introduced by the tag Note:

Piece Names

caliph  - compound leaper (0,1)+(2,2)
          Note: This is different from Charles Gilman's caliph
          Note: synonyms are waffle (CwdA) and phoenix (large Shogi variants)

diamond - compound leaper (1,1)+(0,2)
          Note: synonyms for this piece are duke and kylin

emperor - compound leaper (0,1)+(1,2)
          Note: a synonym is marquis (Derzhanski's list drawing from Adrian  King)

ferfil - compound leaper (1,1)+(2,2)
         Note: most established synonym on the CVP is 'modern elephant'

frog - compound leaper (1,1)+(0,3). The simplest amphibian.

hospitaler - compound leaper (1,2)+(2,2)

prince - compound leaper (1,1)+(1,2)

pterodactyl - compound leaper (3,3)+(5,5)+(0,15). The simplest triple range amphibian
    Note: I love this piece *because* it is so 'over the top'

templar - compound leaper (0,2)+(1,2)

wazaba - compound leaper (0,1)+(0,2)
         Note: synonym woody rook (CwdA)

Piece terms

amphibian - A compound leaper who can reach any square on the chess board whose components aren't free leapers 

free leaper - A leaper that can reach any square on a given board. On the standard 8x8 board there are 5 free leapers: wazir, knight, giraffe, zebra, and antelope.

The lore apprentice (Zauberlehrling) of Lines of Relay is an offshot of the querquisite, I conceived it by misunderstanding its moves. See

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSlinesofrelay%28l

I am aware of the name Okapi for about a decade when I found it in several problem databases on fairy chess problems. However, a search here

http://www.softdecc.com/pdb/search.pdb

(enter PIECE='Okapi' in the query form)

reveals some problems going back to 1970, Most Okapi problems are authored by Erich Bartels, but other prblemists joined the crew. If you have ever seen an okapi (I did, the Franfurt/Main zoo is a proud owner of the rare species), it is a particulary well choosen name for a horse-zebra vompound.

Digging through references on Gazelle, I found it only as a synonym for Camel (the (1,3).-leaper) in Turkish great chess V

http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/greatchessv.html

This is confirmed by George Duke here:

http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/falconpatent.html

and George know more chess variant literature than I can ever dream of.

The Ferz-Knight compound has the synonym priest - again a very unspecific name. It occurs in Töws' Generic chess piece creation system and Derzhanski's list.

I once aggressively tracked names for compound leapers and noted them on paper, it looks like a good idea to put them on the CVP pages some time.