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Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Sep 28, 2011 07:56 AM UTC:
Well, in Fairy-Max I support the Clobberers and the Nutters (together with FIDE) in all asymmetric combinations. This is partly inspired by easy of implementation; I might have implemented the Rookies as well, if it were not for the fact that the Short Rook falls outside the set of meta piece types supported by Fairy-Max.

Btw, it was not clear to me what the promotion rules are in CDA. 'Every piece type initially on the board' is a bit ambiguous, because it is not clear if piece type here means colored or uncolored piece type. I assumed it meant colored, i.e. if white has a Queen in the initial setup, and black not, black cannot promote to Queen. This seemed more in the spirit of different armies. As Fairy-Max is not aware of the possibility to under-promote, I thus let it promote always to the dominant piece of the respective army.

Another observation: Armies can not only be modified by 1->1 or 2->2 substitutions, but also by changing the number of pieces. 'Charge of the Light Brigade', which is basically FIDE Chess starting from the position

. q . k q . q .
p p p p p p p p
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
P P P P P P P P
N N N N K N N N

would then also qualify as a CDA sub-variant (if we add the rule that white can only promote to Knight. It would be a light sub-variant, though, as the total value of the armies falls well below the usual 31 points.