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Jeremy Lennert wrote on Thu, Jul 21, 2011 06:37 PM UTC:
Unless I am mistaken, the Bison cannot triangulate either.

Attacking the same square after a move is an advantage, but attacking a different square after a move is also an advantage.  I'm not currently persuaded that the former is better.  You mention forking power, but attacking a new square seems likely to be better for that--if one of the pieces you 'fork' was already threatened and your opponent chose to leave it in place (and you chose not to capture it), then the fork isn't likely to distress him overmuch, is it?

It is interesting to compare the Bison to the Centaur (WFN, knight+king).  Both have 16 moves, but the Centaur's power is concentrated, while the Bison's is dispersed.  If you drop them on a random location on a crowded chessboard, the Centaur reaches more squares on average (because its moves are less likely to be limited by the edge of the board), but the Bison has more squares it can reach within 2 moves.

I've played with both in For the Crown, and found the Centaur effective for defense and (with support) for forcing a checkmate, but the Bison appears to have far more forking power and makes an excellent harassing piece (though part of this advantage seems to come from 'stealth', having more moves that are not shared by enemy pieces).  Though perhaps players with greater skill would draw different conclusions.

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