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Here's an idea of mine for a CV invention that I'll study at leisure; it's based on a reverse symmetry re-positioning of the setup for Fergus' Grotesque Chess, except that the rules (including for castling) would be the same as for in Capablanca Chess (it might be called 'Highball Chess') - for one thing, I like that the Chancellors won't ever develop and then swap right away; bishops can avoid trading if desired, and position of the knights doesn't seem to pose any serious problems, either (there is no truly wonderful setup, for Capablanca Chess' armies, and tradeoffs in it seem necessary to seek an optimal solution; I stuck with Capa castling rules partly due to not wanting to bend tradition even more, partly to see if Capa rules were all that are needed, and partly so this CV idea is even more different from Grotesque Chess):

https://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/grotesque.html

I added your suggestion about the setup to the Grotesque Chess page, along with a suggestion for another variation on the setup.

Okay. I wasn't completely sure if it qualified to everyone as a seperate variant (like Reverso Chess is given on CVP as a seperate CV from chess, in spite of being just reverse symmetric [oddly, with the White K and Q switching]). I'll be glad if there's ever a rules-enforcing preset for it and/or your spin-off asymmetric sub-variant. At least the ideas are there. At the moment my laptop is driving me slightly crazy, so just as well I'm not trying to make any submissions soon.

I do think it might be an idea to try such CVs with straight Capablanca Chess castling rules, just to see if fancier castling rules really are necessary - some people may prefer classical-style castling for tradition's (and simplicity's) sake.

https://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/grotesque.html

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/erf/ReversoC.html

Here's a diagram of an idea for a CV of mine that I'll look at at leisure. It's a result of trying to come up with knight-like pieces that might work better on 10x8 (or bigger) than plain knights, by protecting a castled K and/or influencing the opponent's half of the centre, yet hopefully not being way too powerful. The Knight-Alfil compound piece is represented by the elephant+knight figurine. I also used Knight-Ferz compound pieces, to have all pawns in the setup guarded. It seems possible for just one of either type of augmented knight to mate a lone K, though I don't yet know if mates are forcible, in under 50 moves, both cases [edit: H.G.'s mating app seems to suggest so, with the NF being much faster at doing so than the NA]. In addition, I used B-D compound pieces, so that all 3 mentioned types would be close in value (I think) on 10x8; it's not inconceivable that on infrequent occasions, 3 pawns might prove an exceptional match for just one piece, of these 3 piece types. The Qs are still FIDE Qs. Promotion is to any piece type in the setup except K. Castling would be Flexible Castling (like in Gross Chess), where an unmoved K can move 2, 3 or possibly 4 steps towards an unmoved R, with said R ending up on the square adjacent to the K on the other side of it, on the first rank. I'm thinking I may call the idea 'Hybrid Chess', if it seems feasible still after more study.

A nice idea. For this I think there are 3 knight candidates: the NA, the ND and the NH (especially if you allow a 10 ranks depth to the board). The 3 diagonal jump does not work as it is already reachable 2 knight moves. Of course the slower NW and NF have a role to play out also. Good luck with these.

@ Aurelian: Your reply inspired me, so I came up with a 10x10 CV idea that uses 4 of the 6 types of N-like compounds that you mentioned. The idea is a bit heavy on the use of N-like pieces, but it may be modified later if ever submitted. I could't find anything for the N-Tripper(3,3 diagonal leaper), so I've used a Pegasus figurine instead. The N-like pieces and BD all seem (to me) relatively close in value on 10x10. The Qs are still FIDE Qs. Promotion is to any piece type in the setup except K. Castling would be Flexible Castling (like in Gross Chess), where an unmoved K can move 2, 3 or possibly 4 steps towards an unmoved R, with said R ending up on the square adjacent to the K on the other side of it, on the second rank. I'm thinking I may call the idea 'Hybrid Decimal Chess', if it seems feasible still after more study. [edit: this time H.G.'s mating app suggests a ND mates in under 50, a NA mates in under 65, and a N-Threeleaper (or N-Tripper) assisted by the K cannot mate a lone K.]

Castling would be Free Castling (like in Gross Chess), where an unmoved K can move 2, 3 or possibly 4 steps towards an unmoved R, with said R ending up on the square adjacent to the K on the other side of it, on the first rank.

This is called flexible castling. Free castling, which is not used in Gross Chess, gives you more options for where to place the Rook.

Okay Fergus, I've gone back and fixed the appropriate posts with edits. Thanks.

edit: I've added in the following CV idea of mine, for further study; I may call it Constabulary Chess. Castling is as in FIDE Chess, promotion is to any piece type in the setup, except for K. Analogues to Fool's and Scholar's Mates are possible:

edit2: Another possible CV invention idea is to substitute RFs for the FAs on the c-file AND substitute BWs for the FAs on the f-file in diagram below - could be called 'Accelerated Constabulary Chess'.

Hi Kevin. I also got inspired by your latest contribution to this thread. I had build two variants in chessV. The zebra picture stands for knight+dabbabah.

It seems I can't add pictures. Can anyone help?

What you were trying to do was not only not working but was wrecking the formatting of the page so I deleted two of your comments.

What you were doing was trying to place the entire binary data of the image itself directly into the comments. The comments are stored in a database and have a maximum length, which you were exceeding, so the data was being cut off. But this approach is a bad idea anyway.

To post images, you either need to post a link to the image (stored in a separate file) or else use dynamically generated images (such as from the Diagram Designer.) Under the Edit menu, you will see the option to upload files.

I do not understand which edit menu!

The menu on the top of the page. Play, Games, Explore ... Edit

I see: Play,Games,Explore,Shop,Web,Help and my name (the login menu). No eidt. Should I upgrade something?

Maybe only editors see that. You can to go a game page of your and select 'Upload or Manage Files' from the black box towards the bottom. But that will associate the graphics with the game in question.

But if you are trying to show board diagrams, you should not upload anything. Use the Diagram Designer which will give you a link which generates the picture dynamically so no extra files are stored on the server. This is what Kevin has done for his diagrams. Since this converstion topic is not associated with any page, any files it references will be stored in some arbitrary location and will take up server space forever and we won't even know what they are used for.

Ok, I shall do that tomorrow morning. I wanted to use print screen images from chessV, to spare the work. The diagram designed is no trouble though. Thanks Greg!

You're welcome. Thank you for your cooperation to help keep the server from getting more cluttered!

I'll look forward to seeing those ideas of yours, Aurelian. Regarding my earlier CV idea 'Hybrid Decimal Chess', I'd note that I've since discovered the N-(3,3) compound pieces come somewhat close to making the setup fail based on concrete moves White can make, as the (3,3) power almost busts the setup from Black's point of view (maybe it sort of does, if I'm underestimating that piece type a bit, still).

I don't know if it's the quickest or best thing to do, but I still don't cut and paste from the Diagram Designer straight into a thread post like this one. Instead, I make a post first, then go back and next use an edit to that post to make the cut and paste (that's what I found helpful to do, before any recent changes to CVP website's 'Comments system' might have made it no longer best to do so - otherwise I found myself needing to edit what came from cutting and pasting, in order to make the diagram be displayed, if I did the cutting and pasting within my immediate version of the post).

As another aside, after all these years, I also have not figured out how to merely quote parts of people's posts with the help of CVP's 'system'.

I've edited my last post in this thread a bit, in case anyone missed it.

As another aside, after all these years, I also have not figured out how to merely quote parts of people's posts with the help of CVP's 'system'.

In the HTML format for the comment click source then choose the quote sign near the styles submenu.

In the HTML format for the comment click source 

Thanks. After quoting you, I went back to Markdown format. Let's see if it works.

As I was saying earlier I got inspired by your idea and I thought further about it. I wanted to have one orthogonal and one diagonal knight enhancement so I came up with these:

I have made the above mentioned playable in ChessV to check if to much firepower does not make the game blend. The amound of firepower does not seem to me a problem in the games I watched with ChessV playing itself. But I got another worry. There are four pieces in both games that are around 5 pawns of strength (slightly weaker that the rook) and nothing in between. So I had chosen to invent the super alpaca that in betza is written WmDmF. The super alpaca worths around 2.5 pawns. First I had tried with 4 super alpacas each side but the games became to clogged. So I than chose a more conservative 2 super alpacas game. In the end I came up with the following which I consider an improvement over the original two games.