Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
My thoughts:
Absorber Chess is probably too close to Absorption Chess; Cannibal Chess is likewise taken. But you've probably already considered those, and others like them.
Power Eaters, perhaps?
By the way, the Metropolitan name is already taken, by a Bishop+Gryphon piece. Would something like Disciple, Evangelist, or Apostle work? (I like Evangelist best of these, as it applies to a religious "harvester" of sorts.) I really like the other two, though, especially the Battlemaster.
Incidentally, can your game have triple compounds? If so, I've already named the Gnu+Bishop as the Sangoma (a religious figure in southern Africa, where the gnu is native); the rest I leave in your hands.
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Oct 26, 2023 05:54 PM UTC in reply to Michael Nelson from 04:39 PM:The Camel compound is the Imam, which has the property of mating a bare King on an empty board unassisted.
I don't see how it would do that, without assistance of its King.
My mistake. You are correct--it doesn't cover one of the wazir moves even at the edge of the board. But it does confine the King rather nicely as you bring in the King or another piece to cover that square.
I like the Evangelist piece name and I will experiment with triple compounds. The Knight-Camel-Bishop-Harvester quadruple compound would be strange a more than a little frightening. It covers more squares than the Amazon (aka the Terror), but unlike the Amazon, can't mate unassisted.
The quad compound would be so singular that, based on what I can find on Zulu mythology, I'd want to call it Inkosazana.
I have a name: Colorful Osmosis Chess. Colorful refers to the importance of color-bound and color-switching pieces while osmosis is a synonym of absorption. I decided to not use triple and quadruple compounds. On the right of the King, the positions of the Bishop and Camel are reversed, thus using rotational symmetry as in Shogi rather than mirror symmetry as in FIDE Chess. This provides one Bishop and one Camel on each color. The absence of castling and promotion at the Pawn line rather than the back rank is also very Shogi-like.
Good choices all around, I'd say. :)
I have a complete.zrf and should be able to submit as soon as I build the web pages. The game should be in the editor's hands tomorrow or the next day.
Bn Em wrote on Sat, Oct 28, 2023 11:42 AM UTC:Strictly speaking of the names Bob's proposed for the Bt[WzB], only Disciple is not also given to a piece in M&B; the Apostle is a (cubic) qB (moving in rings of 6 steps like the hex Finch whose dual it is) and the Evangelist is another cubic piece combining Picket (cf. Tamerlane) and Eunuch (2 steps nonstandard‐diagonally, i.e. unicornwise).
Only the Apostle has actually seen use though, and it could be argued that unlike the Metropolitan (a name I was surprised to see again tbh) whose move is available on the usual board, these are less important anyway, being 3D‐specific. And Evangelist certainly suits this piece well
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I have invented a new variant and have a working .zrf. I don't have a satisfying name for it. (Rather reminiscent of my first variant Separate Realms.)
The essential idea is to use four basic pieces, two leapers, and two sliders. One of each type is color-bound, and the other is color-switching.
For the leapers, I have the Knight and Camel, and the Bishop is the obvious choice for the color-bound slider. For the color-switching slider, I'm using Jörg Knappen's Harvestman from Seenschach, which moves a wazir and then continues as a crooked bishop.
Also, simple pieces can combine with captured enemy pieces as in Assimilation Chess, but the compounds do not split, and there are no King compounds.
So Gnu, Cardinal, and Caliph can appear as well as three Harvestman combinations I've never seen before. I've named the Bishop compound the Metropolitan (a title used in Eastern Orthodoxy for a prelate ranking above an archbishop but below a patriarch). The Camel compound is the Imam, which has the property of mating a bare King on an empty board unassisted. I haven't done the endgame studies to see if mate can be forced. The Knight compound is named Battlemaster, after the Fighter subclass in D&D 5e.
The Harvestman is a good Rook substitute on the whole, though not as good at forcing mate. It does however move in a general rook-like direction with greater mobility. Intuition says this is a reasonable trade-off.
The game is played on a 9x9 board with normal Pawn movement including promotion at the enemy Pawn line rather than the back rank, allowing very FIDE-like Pawn play. Castling is forbidding, so the King is very exposed in the center of the back rank. This is rather reminiscent of Shogi.
A very playable game judged by Zillions vs. itself play. Now I need a name, and I can change some piece names if that fits the theme better.