George Duke wrote on Tue, Oct 6, 2009 05:45 PM UTC:
I have no idea why any variantist is remotely interested in using anymore
Carrera Centaur (BN) and Carrera Champion (RN). On a scale of 1-10 of the
major CV pieces with one at the top, RN and BN are ugly at about 8.0. I
think most designers would put them right below the middle about 5.5 or
6.0, not so low as I do. They ruin many a CV, and are about as interesting
and cumbersome as using mediaeval Alfil (2,2) leaper on a large board.
Dutch designer Freeling's Grand Chess, long referred to as great by
certain novices, gets no more mention here. Any bifurcator or ShortRange
Project piece or Betza ideal-and-practical-values compound lacking full range
tops RN and BN in beautiful play as a general rule. It would not be too hard nowadays to start to rank the best 500 CV pieces, and RN, BN and RBN have only historic interest. This thread describes
several specific flaws. Tutti-Frutti uses the three horrors together on the standard small board, Amazon, Centaur, Champion. I think Betza and Cohen are doing this more or less facetiously -- harbinger of Betza later post-2000, when he straddled important design and sarcasm.
http://www.chessvariants.org/dpieces.dir/tuttifr.html
In fact, you would be hard pressed to find two more Betza uses of RN and BN. He grew out of them. By the days of Chess Variant Page Betza stopped using them -- relatively speaking.
