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Bilateral Chess. Game on 12x8 board adding Lions, switching Cannons, Wizards and pushing Elephants, but keeping the standard array in the middle. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Wed, Oct 23, 2013 03:31 PM UTC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Hands. 
'Hoederer: They need props, you understand, they are given ready-made
 ideas, then they believe in them as they do in God.  We're the ones 
 who make these ideas and we know how they are cooked up; we are never
 quite sure of being right.'   -- from Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains 
 sales.[Quotation parodies the great CV-unwashed: http://www.chessbase.com/;
http://www.fide.com/]


   The other two world experts, Jorg Knappen and Charles Gilman, are invited to corroborate please.  It would appear that Antoine Fourriere has important unique novelty mechanism, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=30211, for generating variety in the Chess array.  Has anyone seen that before, focusing on the first half of Antoine's comment through '1)', not '2)' yet?  Or did Antoine already use this elsewhere not very well noticed?

To go with RNBKQP, Antoine's chosen basics to expand OrthoChess are Camel -> Zebra, Cannon -> Vao, and Elephant -> Machine, all six.  They are six piece-types to complement old-time fundamental six, making twelve piece-types.

But only 9 piece-types appear in the starting array, J being Camel, C Cannon, and E Elephant.   So instead necessarily as the arrows above represent, the two Zebras, one each side, get positioned only upon either side's Camel moving!  Likewise, any first Cannon move generates two Vaos replacing, and any first Elephant move generates two Machines replacing.

Now Elephant is nothing but Ferz plus Alfil, an old CV type happen to be used by Antoine's fellow Frenchman Cazaux for instance in Shako, http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/shako.html.  And Machine is also many decades old simplistic Wazir plus Dabbabah. To get Convergency comprehensive, Antoine calls for Korean Cannon which historically must have screen both moving and capturing.  "Korean Vao" full-fledged was never used by Koreans nor by Korean Chess players. It is suggested by Britisher T.R.Dawson development almost exactly a hundred years ago of Xiangqi Cannon diagonal equivalent. Thus Korean Vao, the Korean Cannon diagonal equivalent, is perfectly understandable CV term used here and there, for convergent, not divergent, piece-type of Cannon extraction and modality.   Clear distinction is made with "Chinese" divergent orthogonal Cannon and derived divergent diagonal Canon on one hand, and "Korean" convergent Cannon/& derived Canon. (Canon and Vao are one and the same, with Arrow yet another synonym). 
So all six new piece-types are convergent, that is moving and capturing the same -- obviously Zebra, Camel, Machine, Elephant too -- making 11 of the 12 p-ts that are utilized on the 8x12 board CV described by AF in fact Convergent.  Only OrthoPawn retains divergency. One expects in general Convergent types to be more readily playable.  

Of course once recognized as Mutator that it is,  Antoine's placement technique "Array-Pair-Morph" (as we may as well call it) has wide applicability across the CV spectrum among others' CVs of Next Chess calibre as well.  
The effect in the present CV game is to have 2x2x2, or eight, standard arrays conveniently available, not just one: JCEMOZ, JOEMCZ, JCMEOZ JOMECZ, ZCEMOJ, ZOEMCJ, ZCMEOJ, ZOMECJ.  The Method ARRAY-PAIR-MORPH is Occam's-Razor-like conforming, in comparison with tacky Pre-Randomized Shuffle selection technique, become proliferated, after FRC itself,
http://www.chessvariants.org/diffsetup.dir/fischer.html,
 Robert Fischer's 1996 futile effort to try to save beaten-to-death Ortho-RNBKQP last-ditch.