Comments by JorgKnappen

An excellent to Carlos Cetina for the really nice diagram.

All Knight moves in the first step are "equal" (in the sense of symmetry), but the continuations fall in two classes that Jelliss terms "3D" (crossing the diagonal, the pure trajectories in Carlos' diagram) and "3L" (crossing the lateral, the "impure" trajectories in Carlos' diagram). Here's a reference on the terminology:

http://www.mayhematics.com/t/2b.htm#%282%29

Splitting the Quintessence into a diagonal and lateral piece is surely feasible and the pieces should both be very playable.

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The German and French term (Spiralspringer and Cavalier spirale) are generic (like crooked Nightrider), for further precision they are qualified (German: enger Diagonalspiralspringer = wide [sic!] diagonal crooked Nightrider etc.)

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Yes, the Nachtmahr army put a lot more of strength on the board than the FIDEs: Just exchange whatever Nightrider against Queen, the Rooks, and one Bishop and you are left with a stronger rest of the army. And because of the huge forking power of the Nahctmahrs, I don't see a chance for the FIDEs to avoid this.

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On relative piece strength: The here termed "wide" pieces are clearly the strongest: They have an enormous "capturing density" and the can-mate property. The classical Nightrider is the weakest, the others are in-between.

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I'd like to see your design of Nachtmahr II (allthough I cannot promise to have time for discussion)

Sounds trivial, but I mention it:

*) You cannot drop a piece onto an occupied square (all pieces in all drop
variants I am aware of)

Restrictions on Check/Checkmate:

*) You cannot drop a piece giving checkmate (Shogi P)

I like the idea of the many interesting new endgames. I just hope that the endgames 3 vs. 2 are decisive (at least when one of the 3 is an adjutant and the left over piece from the 2 is a minor one); otherwise the game will be very drawish.

No, RoAR didn't come out yet. It turned out to be more difficult than expected to create an initial array that is playable (and it may be impossible in an 8x8 setup).

BTW: Thanks for the PBM setup :-)

Great game!

There is a minor glitch in the first diagram: It has two back Leopards (artefacts from an earlier version that was discarded?) in e/i 12.

With the new results on the relative strengths of the different armies, how can they be fine-tuned to the FIDE standard?

For the Nutty Knights several proposals exist (replacing the charging knight with a drunken night or with a charging moo, e.g.); but what about the other armies?

The Rookies can be weakened in two obvious ways (a) Replacing the Short rook R4 with R3 or (b) making the Woody Rook WD a non-jumping R2. I think both adjustments will have the right size of effect.

The Colorbound Clobberers are more difficult because the adjustment needed is smaller. Maybe replacing the Bede (BD) with a BzF2 (Bishop + Crooked Bishop aka Boyscout restricted to 2 moves) has the right size of effect. What would be a good name for the BzF2?

EDIT: Changing the notation from BzF2 to BzB2 suggests the nice name "Busy Beaver" for this piece.

This poor goes to the author who talks a lot about ethics, but always rates his own creation "excellent".

Something is strange today: When I visit this site without logging in, "Tandem Chess" is listed under "Your Favorites". (It is the only favorite for an anonymous visitor of this site)

The favorites list of Tandem Chess displays only two names, the favorites count is 3 (under the entry Bughouse Chess).

Looks like a bug to me.

It works for me. When I enter in the fourth form on this page

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/personq.php

the string "dotancohen" I can find you. Some cache issue?

Nice game with the obvious traces of play-testing.

It is not explicitly stated in the description: I assume, the game ends when the King is checkmated on the top board, i.e., a King cannot be "buried"?

It seems that the Chess Variant you are thinking of has been invented
before, see http://www.chessvariants.org/diffmove.dir/amazone.html on this
site.

Bugs in implementation?

I played this game against the computer using Firefox under Linux and I found the following strange behavious:

1. Sometimes, the computer moved its King to the centre of the board and the game ended. I see reasons for the computer to resign in the concrete situation (and it does not resign in really lost postions). I noticed that castling was a promising move for the computer.

2. When I get a pawn through to promotion, I cannot choose a piece to promote it to. I get a white band over the middle files of the boards, but cannot click on anything. There is a (x) mark, but it does not close the white band either.

An excellent for the great rewrite.

Interesting game and worth trying out.

I also love your pieces, specially the Werewolf and the Unicorn that are new to me.

Here are a few remarks:

The "jumping rook" and "jumping bishop" pieces are known as "ski rook" and "ski bishop" (think of ski jumping!) for a long time, for a reference see, e.g., here: http://www.mayhematics.com/q/mccs.htm

Since your Chess Variant is a themed or Humans, Elves and Orcs, some artistic freedom in piece nameing is generally granted, But I think you are going overboard in renaming the Human pieces (the standard Chess pieces) only to create unnecessary confusion. Also, the name Phoenix is given traditionally to another piece (WA) and should not be reused. A Centaur is usually understood as a KN compound piece (also known as knighted King or crowned Knight). The piece you name Centaur is usually known as Ferfil (Fearful being a wordplay on that) or as Modern Elephant.

For list of piece names, you may consult these references:

http://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/whos-who-on-8x8.html (My favorite reference list, because you can find a piece when you know its approximate strength)

http://www.chessvariants.com/index/mainquery.php?type=Piececlopedia&category=&startswithletter=&language=English&daysyoung=0&daysold=0&minyearinvented=&maxyearinvented=&boardrows=0&boardcols=0&boardlevels=0&boardcells=0&authorid=&inventorid=&orderby=LinkText&usethisheading=Search+Results&displayauthor=on&displayinventor=on&regexpurl=&regexplinktext=

(The long link above gives a list of Variant Chess piece article in the piecoclopedia on this site)

And an  external link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_chess_piece

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.

Thanks, Chris, for your comments. I finally came back to this game and applied the fix you suggested to the initial area, naming it "Move zero" rule.

An interesting and very playable game. The figures are divergent pieces moving as the nominal piece and capturing as Querquisites.

It is great to see a Zillions file for this game. The graphics are well done, specially the symbols for the Knaves and Debtors.