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Lemurian Shatranj. 8x8 variant that features short-range pieces. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Joe Joyce wrote on Sun, Jul 15, 2007 07:55 PM UTC:
Thank you for the comments, David and Jeremy. 
David, you are absolutely right in the limitation to the king, being unable to move into/through check. Thank you for making it explicit. Heh, thought you'd get me on the WW, which: 'winds up on exactly the same squares as the war elephant', which it doesn't, exactly. It misses the 4 Alfil squares. It counterbalances those 4 squares with the 4 initial wazir squares. This leads me to suggest that since both pieces hit the same number of squares and have the same range, the more powerful one is the one that attacks more close squares. This would be the double wazir [isn't there a better name for this thing? C'mon, what is it?], which, since it may change color, should be more powerful anyway. Finally, the 'and/or' in the linear H&S descriptions is my way of trying to get off cheap in explaining the exact moves of pieces that may step one, leap 2, or do both, in either order, but only in a straight line. There, I got it all in. ;-)
Jeremy, you are right about the weakness of the corner pieces. They are, in fact, my knight analogs for LemS and LemT. And you well know the Hero pieces are rook analogs that moved in 1 square and took over the knight's position, because they took over the knight's move. That's how the knight pieces got banished to the corners, which is supposed to be a no-no. But is it always? The FAD can get out of the corner easily; on turn 1 it has 2 moves, 1 of which attacks 2 of the 4 center squares. The FAD is a strong piece for a knight analog, even though it is colorbound and stuck in a corner. Is the double-wazir good enough in the corner, or will it languish like the 'woody rook' often does when it starts in a corner?