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Piececlopedia: Bowman
Historical notes
The bowman is a modern invention, invented for the large commercial
chess variant Quantum.
Movement
The bowman moves like a non-jumping chess knight to an unoccupied square. Specifically, it
moves either one straight and then one diagonal, or one diagonal and
then one straight. Therefore it always has available paths to reach its
destination square, only one of which need be unblocked for the bowman
to make the move. In the diagram below, the bowman can move to any of
the green squares, provided that they are unoccupied.
The bowman captures by moving as it normally does. If there is a piece
located another knight move in the same direction away from the bowman's
destination square, then that piece is captured, regardless of
intervening pieces. The bowman does not actually move to the square
occupied by the captured piece, thus it captures 'from afar.' In the
diagram below, the bowman could capture a piece on any of the red
squares by moving to the corresponding green square. For example, by
moving to d3 (which can be done provided 1) either d4 or e4 is
unoccupied by pieces on either side, and 2) d3 is unoccupied), the
bowman captures an enemy piece on c1, regardless of an other intervening
pieces. The piece on c1 is removed from the board, and the bowman
remains on d3.
You can also view the Quantum webpage's own diagrams of movement and capture.
Remarks
The rules for Quantum do not state whether or not capturing is optional.
For example, if a bowman moves to a given square, and there is an enemy
piece on the capture square, is the bowman obligated to capture it? It
is possible that he may not want to, if it would open a useful path for
his opponent, and may even be illegal, if it capturing the piece creates
a discovered check. In this case, is the bowman forbidden from moving
to this square, or can he move without capturing?
Note that for the bowman to be able to capture in all eight directions,
the minimum board size must be 9x9. In the three versions of Quantum
that use the bowman, Quantum II uses a
10x10 board, and Quantum III and Quantum IV use 12x12
boards.
Pieces that can capture from afar tend to be powerful, because they can
freely capture pieces regardless of how much they are directly defended.
The bowman is an interesting piece because this power is reduced by the
bowman's awkwardness of movement and even greater awkwardness of
capture; it only captures a piece that is on the opposite corner of a
5x3 rectangle from the bowman, with additional limitations.
In Quantum, the bowman is combined with other standard chess pieces and
chess piece combinations to create a variety of new pieces.
This is an item in the Piececlopedia: an overview of
different (fairy) chess pieces.
Written by Benjamin C Good.
WWW page created: September 17, 1998. Last modified: May 28, 1999.
Last modified: Monday, December 22, 2008
