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More detail about the original Amazons can be found on http://www.karpov.ru/katalog/_9th_en.php, a page showing a novelty set based on a battle of the sexes in Classical mythology. Shakespeare used the outcome as the backdrop to a Midsummer Night's Dream.
Oh, I see. For example RookKnights on the a-file, and Amazons on the h-file. Sure, that's good stuff. All double and triple compound pieces can be used that way- 2 at a time as above, or even 4 at a time, replacing 4 of the rooks knights and bishops in the original line up. By the way, I dislike using 6 new pieces. For example a- file cardinals, b-file squirrels, c-file amazons, f-file centaurs, g-file RookKings, and h-file BishopKnightKings or whatever. The problem with 6 new pieces, in my humble opinion, is that too many basic chessmen are eliminated from the game. New pieces are great, but the interaction of the basic pieces with the unorthodox pieces is interesting, entertaining, and not to be missed. I always like to keep the queens in the starting array for this reason.
I've read here and there about the Amazon piece type having a bad rap because it's so powerful, which immediately gave me a soft spot for the lady - why does she not really deserve to exist? As David P. noted, Amazons were used in place of queens on 8x8 (chess otherwise), some centuries ago in parts of Russia (called Amazon Chess on this website).
Like Fergus noted elsewhere, powerful pieces are best used on large sized boards, and I think Amazons are best employed this way, too. A more recently invented game where they are used is in my own 10x10 Sac Chess, where each side in fact has two Amazons in the setup, besides many other powerful pieces, which goes against power density theory that I was unaware of when inventing it - luckily the game seems quite playable, and is currently in the top 30 of Game Courier (maybe thus deserving a mention in this Piececlopedia article, if it's eventually updated).
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