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I'm glad the descriptions and diagram helped you. Thanks for the feedback.
What an interessing game! One that I will probably try to convince my friends to play with! :-)
This reminds me of a Modest Variant I came up with once: Rooks --> Champions Bishops --> Wizards Knights --> Princes (Knight + 0/3 Leaper) Queens --> A Piece Without A Name (Zebra + 3/3 leaper) (K and P stay the same) Each of these three pieces has exactly 12 moves it can make, and they all compliment each other nicely. --Jared
Nicely fluidly weird. Normally leapers greater than maybe (3,0) or (2,1) don't work on a board this size, but with <strong>everything</strong> but the King/General and Pawns/Sergeants leaping, this isn't the usual problem.
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One thing I noticed is that it is very common for Pegasi to be exchanged, which is unfortunate as they are interesting pieces. It might be nice to treat them as like Lions in Chu Shogi (or Golems in Golem Chess, which borrowed the idea from Chu Shogi) and not let them be exchanged easily.
The Pegasi do sometimes get exchanged early, and I too miss them when they go. They're even more interesting on a big board. The game for which I invented them is on an 11 rank board, just as Macdonald's Wizard and Champion both rose to prominence on a board 12 'ranks' deep.
It might be interesting to try the following modest variant of ximeracak: 0: all rules as Ximeracak except as noted below 1: when the general is under check it can switch with the pegasus, provided of course the pegusus is not also attacked. This simple modification will increase the pegasus's streategic value which will make people be more careful before putting pegasus in harm's way, and keep it in the game for the end game. In fact it should have the overall effect of decreasing the apeal of captures in the game.
I may have to try this. The rule idea has some interesting ramifications. I wonder, though, if it won't make it too hard to give mate in a number of positions. The impact on promotion decisions is also worth study.
mating is not necessarily more difficult but endgame strategies are dramatically impacted. What I think will happen is a sequence of checks that manuavers the general in to a square such that a final fork of the pegasus and the general gives mate. To win a player must somehow construct the sequence, and not to lose by preventing them. Also it definitely impacts promotion choice and skew it toward pegasus for defense, or toward wizard/champion (maybe) for offence
I wonder if this proposed Pegasus/General swap rule ought require the Pegasus to be defending the King. Thus, you could first drive off the Pegasus, then mate.
I'll play around with it both ways some time in the next week, as soon as I get a free hour or so to sling Zillions code. (Scanning and cascades are still annoying.) :) At least the game already has a promote-only-to-what-is-gone rule, so the issue of multiple Pegasi cannot arise. I kind of like the image of the heroic Pegasus flying to the aid of the beseiged General. It fits the theme somehow.
I have discoverd the Fool's mate for ximeracak. by having a longer variant of it sprung on me in a game. 1. Wizard d1-c4 X 2. Wizard c4-b5 mate Where X is any move that does not vacate a square adjacent to the General or defend b5. A beautifully treacherous game indeed.
Ow. Zillions did that to me once in a test game. :) Like the fool's mate in orthochess, once you've seen it you avoid it in the future. Thanks for the compliment. 'Beautifully treacherous' almost sounds like ad copy.
Hey! I was gonna do that and now you've spoiled it!
Finally inclination and opportunity coincided and I tracked down a link for Lojban orthography: http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/brochure/phonol.html#idxphonology Incidentally, Lojban is related to Loglan. The upshot is, if you pronounce ximeracak. with the 'x' as the 'ch' sound in the Scottish 'loch', 'c' as the English digraph 'ch', and the 'i' as an English 'long e', and use natural English pronunciation for the rest, you will be close. Finish up by ending the 'k' sound with a glottal stop (like the 'tt' in Brooklynese 'bottle') instead of the normal English aspiration. Then remember to stress the next-to-last syllable, and you've got it. Think 'khee-mer-RAH-chahk'.
It would be nice to have a piece that moves 3, 4, or 5 squares orthogonally to make a nice diamond shape with the major pieces' combined movement diagram.
Any single major piece with a king can't perform a checkmate in endgame. I'm afraid this is too drawish.
Yesterday I made a serious mistake. Since the royal piece is not a king in chess but a gold general, a singgle major piece with a general can perform a checkmate in endgames. But it must be that the gold general on a higher rank and the green general on a lower rank. I still have questions on Pegasus. Maybe this piece is so strong that gives gold advantage. The inventor set it on c1 in the opening. Because if set as queen in chess and general as king, Gold can checkmate by 1. Pf4++. Even the opening setup is gold Pegasus on c1, the shortest game could be 1.Pf3 Pc6 2. Pb4++. So if gold moves 1. Pf3, green has to defend b4 square. So it'sa tactic game right in the opening. But I believe a game with depth has possibilities of positional play. I doubt if Pegasus is good to use. It leaps such a long space. Maybe it's hard to adjust its position. Has anyone approved that it can travel to every square on an 8x8 board? Is it necessary to set all major pieces leapers? I suggest Pegasus could be a slider, which slides orthogonally to any direction and diagonally forward. This slider can checkmate green even if green general is on a higher rank. Another question is why design Sergeant this way? Why not just use pawns in f.i.d.e. chess? Is there any necessity?
I hope there are not any mistakes below, without any revision possible. Okay no one answered, so with attention to detail let's give it a go. Notice (1) First, every Pawn is not covered, which becomes a superficial issue in other cvs. (2) Only Wizard is colourbound, like regular-chess Bishop. (3) Overby's ximeracak makes one appreciate Wizard and Champion as pretty creative match-up, that get lost on the too-large Omega chessboard. __________ (4) Shi Ji finds Champion and General can corner-mate General, but does not that already work with Kings instead of Generals too? For instance also both short-range Man alone and (Wazir+Dabbabah) are enough. _______ (5) Pegasus' leg of Giraffe(1,4) is indeed poor because 'c1-d5' forces decision whether to trade Pegasi right away. Any (x,4) leg is hard to work right into only 8-deep, whatever file started on. I think Glenn realizes that and did not get around to correcting it. ________ (6) The four piece-types go to mutually exclusive squares, the drawing shows. To keep that concept, I think making Pegasus (Zebra+Tripper-3,3) might solve everything, except the Pawn question of the last comment this week. That Pegasus as (Z+3,3) becomes like 4 arrowheads, and they set off well with Champion, whose footprint looks like the bow to those arrowheads. That change of Pegasus would be a subvariant with Overby's permission. ________________________ (7) Since deciding ximeracak's king should be general, the temptation is also to offset by doing something with Pawns. What Overby adds to Pawn is jazzy for effect, but better not strengthen Pawn that much here. (By the way, Overby likes to use *general* and *sergeant* here because he works for the national usa Boy Scouts, 100 years old, and having their not completely different ranks-concept as some military.) Actually, full-fledged Berolina might be best of all with their so mobile files against the 4 leaper-types, in further improved subvariant of 'x'. Since Berolina can exit two ways, each moderate leaper then get lots of choices for even more of what Aronson's comment calls ''fluidity'' of this cv become genre by considering its variants. (8) Over-all, that becomes, if inventor Overby should approve, ''Berolina Ximeracak with Arrowhead and original ximeracak promotion rules.'' (9) Otherwise, Overby's enhancement of Pawn looks okay too, maybe without the two-step. The main need is to get rid of the reach four-up of Pegasus in the Giraffe 1,4. (10) Finally, (0,3) omitted still seems right because of Pawns' general forwardness -- kind of 'a Cannon and Rook uglification' principle generalized. /// What else would be important to discuss about ximeracak? Whole point is to promote new ideas and not leave them unanswered because they are hard. Good luck.
Put up yer Dukes!
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