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H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, May 18, 2021 08:58 AM UTC in reply to Jörg Knappen from Mon May 17 10:01 PM:

With Zillions of Games as an Oracle the original draft was considered too weak...

Was this from game results or just the values that Zillions reports for the pieces? The latter are usually not very good. I don't want to claim the piece values assigned by the Interactive Diagram are reliable, but at least they cannot be fooled by defining moves in duplicat. The values it gives below (in the piece legend after clicking on the header of the 'move' column) correspond reasonably well with the game results in Fairy-Max:

satellite=hadean files=8 ranks=8 graphicsDir=http://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/alfaeriePNG35/ promoZone=1 maxPromote=1 squareSize=35 graphicsType=png lightShade=#FFFFD5 darkShade=#527362 useMarkers=1 symmetry=none promoChoice=Q,F,F',D,E,W,W',R,B pawn::fmW*fceF::a2-h2,,a7-h7 panda::WafmpafWafmpafafmpafWafmpafafmpafafmpafW:warmachineriderwazir:,,a8,h8 marquis::WN:knightwazir:,,b8 lame marquis::WafsW:knightwazir:,,g8 unicorn::yafsWN::,,c8 lame unicorn::yafsW:unicorn:,,f8 erl queen::KafmpafKafmpafafmpafKafmpafafmpafafmpafK:falcon:,,d8 knight:N:::b1,g1 bishop::::c1,f1 rook::::a1,h1 queen::::d1 king::::e1,,e8

The game results with Fairy-Max were a bit ambiguous. As black the Switchers scored 58%, which should correspond to about half a Pawn, and is in line with what the typical unorthodox army does. With white, however, it scored 67%. I don't understand why it does somuch better with white. It is not that the initial position is non-quiet, and white immediately gains something. In most games the score only starts to rise in favor of white somewhat later in the game.

It is true that ths lip pieces are tactically extremely dangerous, because their attack can penetrate deep behind enemy lines, and they can attack pieces from behind cover. Perhaps it has somethint to do with the way Fairy-Max leaves the opening phase (where its move choice is heavily perturbed by randomization): white is always the first to do a non-randomized move, and thus in the best position to exploit a sub-optimal move forced by randomization. I will have to further investiate this.


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