Comments by Bob Greenwade
Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages. Sign in to the Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]What's the game under discussion here? (I'm seeing this discussion on the Sign In page.)
That's a possibility, if I can find a way to differentiate the piece from the regular Turtle (the move for which I still need to edit).
293. Three-Toed Sloth. As of this writing, fellow CVP user Bn Em has found the piece that would take the longest to force checkmate against a bare King, with only a King's help, and after looking at a diagram of its move I decided that it deserved a name, and probably some use in a game somewhere.
The choice of move is quite complex: it moves one step directly forward, or diagonally backward and to the right; or leaps two spaces diagonally forward and to the right, or backward and to the left; or leaps two spaces forward and one to the left; or makes one or two leaps of two spaces directly forward. (fWbrFfD2lfNfrblA)
Extra points (and, of course, due credit) to whomever can come up with a good name for fWblFfD2rfNflbrA (to go with this piece the way I created the Purple Finch to go with Adrian King's Blue Gecko). I think they'd be a fun addition to my Kagamigi games.
That's a rather fearsome-looking sloth, and probably needs a bit of reworking; I only just modeled it yesterday, and arguably didn't give it the time it needed (and that I normally give a piece like this) to really look right.
Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]If I could try it with a Peacekeeper (AXNX) I think that might have a higher number.
291. Señora (Argentinian Queen) and 292. Saltador (Argentinian Knight). I actually was getting something else ready for this weekend, and then realized that I'd already uploaded another version of it, so here are two pieces that go with the Faro and Loco from two weekends ago.
To refresh, the Argentinian sliders capture like the conventional pieces, but must jump over another piece in order to move without capture. The Faro (Rook) does this orthogonally and the Loco (Bishop) does it diagonally, so naturally the Señora (Queen) does both. (cQmpQ)
The Saltador (Knight) is a slightly different story. It moves like a normal Knight, particularly when capturing, but can only move without capturing if at least one of the two spaces it's jumping past has a piece in it. (cnNpafsmK)
The Saltador looks a little weird, but then again most of my "enhanced Knight" pieces look weird because the enhancements are meant for symmetrical pieces, which Knights are not.
Checkmating Applet. Practice your checkmating skill with fairy pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Is there a way to enter XBetza on this? I wanted to try out the Blue Gecko (frB4lbW2flFbrFfW) but I can't limit the B move to 4 on this diagram.
Banzai Chess. Members-Only Friendly pieces can be pushed and pushed pieces can bounce. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Play Chess Variants with Jocly. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I think I've mentioned in our game chat why I prefer KNAD (or, to me, KNS) for the Lion: it does at least have some history. I don't know of anywhere else where a Lion is BNS. (Even so, if it had an adjective on the name, reflected by a compound in the Greenwade graphic, I could deal with it.)
In other news, I'm told that the problem I was having with Thingiverse's editor has been patched up as of last Tuesday. I haven't tested it out yet; I probably will do so over the weekend.
290. Threeleaper. This piece is one that I had assumed was purely a problemist's piece (or a piece used only as part of a compound, such as the Frog) until I learned that it apparently is used in a version of Tamerlane. Said version isn't on this site, so I don't know how well it works in practice, but given that it can only reach about 11% of the squares on a board (at most) it's probably not impressive.
Its move is simple: it leaps three squares orthogonally. (H)
Like I say, it can have some value; just not a lot. (Still, I was surprised when I found that I hadn't already posted it.)
Such a straightforward piece deserves a straightforward model. (And of course you can easily imagine what the Fourleaper and Fiveleaper would look like!)
Constabulary Chess. Members-Only Chess on an 8x10 board with compound piece types added. (8x10, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Home page of The Chess Variant Pages. Homepage of The Chess Variant Pages.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]That looks like my Viking up there. :)
Monster Mash. Members-Only Armies consist of classic monsters and scary creatures. (13x13, Cells: 169) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Constabulary Chess. Members-Only Chess on an 8x10 board with compound piece types added. (8x10, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
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I suspect the last; I have two rules pages (Monster Mash and Xodohtro Chess), two GC presets (Hundred Acre Chess and Food Fight), and a Piececlopedia article (Okapi) waiting to be published.
Unnecessarily Complicated Chess. Members-Only Why do things the easy way, when doing them the hard way is so much more fun? (19x23, Cells: 423) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
I do have my issue at Thingiverse reported, and the staff moderator has been able to duplicate my problem; so while I'm waiting for the dev staff to fix it, I might as well post a bit of a something to keep the PotD slots filled.
284-289. The Orthodox Pieces (King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn). While they're not really fairy chess pieces on their own, they do appear in a majority of chess variants, and I do have models of them in a single set. I don't think I need to identify any of them or discuss their moves.
Now, however long the team at Thingiverse takes, at least I won't (necessarily) have to worry about it before Friday. :)
And of course, the big question: Why don't I have at least one Imitator piece in Unnecessarily Complicated Chess?
I need to go fix that.
283. General. There have been many pieces called simply "General" over the years, not even considering those in Shogi and elsewhere that have adjectives and other modifiers in their names. This version, the one that I prefer to use, was created by Guiseppi Ciccolini in 1820 for his version of chess. It slides diagonally like a Bishop, or orthogonally an even number of spaces like a lame Dabbabarider. (BnDD)
István Paulovits also created his own General in 1820, which moves as Mann or Camel (KC); I'll address that one at a later date.
The model is based on a bit of 2D art that someone did for what a Gold or Silver General from Shogi would look like as a chess piece. Looking at it now, I think the center strut probably should be thickened (both for sturdiness and to better match the illustration).
282. Sandworm. This spawned from a recent comment on this list, like a throwaway line in a movie that becomes a classic.* This is inspired by the creatures from well-known desert planets in the Star Wars and Dune franchises (Tattooine and Arrakis, respectively), but it's not the full-sized version (which probably would be something to go into a four-square space, though with rather similar moves). This can be thought of as a "Juvenile Sandworm."
A main feature of the fictional sandworms is that they burrow underground, so as a piece the Sandworm simulates that by jumping others. At its basic, it slides in any radial direction, like a Queen. In the interest of game balance, I limit that to two pieces that it can burrow under, though in games with particularly large armies that may increase. If there are no pieces to burrow under and the Sandworm moves no more than 4 spaces to capture, it may continue to capture another piece in the next square. ((paf)2QcyafQ4)
In this (hopefully not overly confusing) diagram, the White Sandworm is able to capture any of the Black pices on the board. The only two that it can capture in a single move, however, are the Knight (i9) and Queen (j10), since the Knight is only 3 spaces away, the Queen is in the next adjacent space, and there are no intervening obstacles.
I probably could've posted this much earlier, but (aside from the previously-mentioned issues at Thingiverse) the shape kept coming out so that Thingiverse's sample-graphic (above) made it look like... well, something that probably shouldn't be shown on this site. It still kinda does, but I think it reads OK. (I might see about making the teeth large enough to be visible in the image.)
*It's even happened to my own comments, at the Super-Team Family: the Lost Issues blog. I was only kidding when I mentioned Snow White and the Seven Soldiers of Victory -- which became my first idea to be published there -- and my remark about Bugs Bunny vs. Doctor Doom was supposed to be an example of things we probably wouldn't see done!
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294. Cerberus. There are multiple ideas of what Cerberus would be like as a chess piece; I figure that the Cerberus move should be triple that of a Dog. However, I've found two versions of Dog, one from large shogi variants and the other by Musketeer Chess (both of which I should post sometime soon; I thought I already had). I decided to base Cerberus off the latter.
The Musketeer Dog (which I like to call Big Dog) has a move of one space sideways or three spaces diagonally; that would give Cerberus a move of three sideways and nine diagonally. The latter seems enough that it might as well be a slide. (BsW3)
I think it would be interesting to see how existing games with their own version of Cerberus would fare with this in its place.
Modeling Cerberus as a chess piece is hard; mine isn't the only attempt at it. I think it does the job, though.