The idea of the Silly Sliders was born out of my search for a piece that would be almost a Bishop, but not color bound. I wanted that because I wanted to investigate whether the Bishop pair bonus had anything to do with color binding, or whether it is just a consequence of the move sets of two Bishops on opposit shades have so many orthogonal contacts. (But I still haven't gotten to doing that...) First I considered replacing just one of the F moves by a W move, to have minimal difference. But because it then attacks orthogonally adjacent squares it has mating potential, which could make a difference. One way to avoid that was replace all F moves by W. And then I liked the resulting piece.
But for the actual test it would probably be better to take a divergent piece that replaces only one of the (backwards) mF moves of the Bishop by an mW. That also avoids the problem of mating potential.
The Daring Dragons were made for show-casing a piece with an unusual area binding (odd/even files instead of square color), also in relation to pair bonuses this might involve. I started to like the vRsN (the move pattern of which reminded me of a Dragonfly) because it turned out to have good mating potential despite the fact that the usual method for checkmating with orthogonal sliders (forcing the bare King to take opposition along the ray that traps it, and then make one slider step to check and force the King back) cannot be used there. But there is a very peculiar method for forcing the bare King to take opposition when your King is on the orthogonal, so that you can force it back by checking through a double step.
The idea of the Silly Sliders was born out of my search for a piece that would be almost a Bishop, but not color bound. I wanted that because I wanted to investigate whether the Bishop pair bonus had anything to do with color binding, or whether it is just a consequence of the move sets of two Bishops on opposit shades have so many orthogonal contacts. (But I still haven't gotten to doing that...) First I considered replacing just one of the F moves by a W move, to have minimal difference. But because it then attacks orthogonally adjacent squares it has mating potential, which could make a difference. One way to avoid that was replace all F moves by W. And then I liked the resulting piece.
But for the actual test it would probably be better to take a divergent piece that replaces only one of the (backwards) mF moves of the Bishop by an mW. That also avoids the problem of mating potential.
The Daring Dragons were made for show-casing a piece with an unusual area binding (odd/even files instead of square color), also in relation to pair bonuses this might involve. I started to like the vRsN (the move pattern of which reminded me of a Dragonfly) because it turned out to have good mating potential despite the fact that the usual method for checkmating with orthogonal sliders (forcing the bare King to take opposition along the ray that traps it, and then make one slider step to check and force the King back) cannot be used there. But there is a very peculiar method for forcing the bare King to take opposition when your King is on the orthogonal, so that you can force it back by checking through a double step.