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What about FyaflF or mRpR? I imagine those might be close to a rook. Or maybe something like R3fB3. Maybe it depends on what other pieces you have

The mRpR sounds interesting too. That is a compound of the Xiangqi and Janggi cannons. I have not considered it. Now that I'm thinking it is always around rook level but more useful in the opening that the endgame. I think it could cause trouble in the opening though. I definitely don't like asymmetric bent riders. For 12x12 R3fB3 is probably below rook. Isn't this piece too blend though? But I was asking more about the pieces I was proposing.

@Aurelian. On my side, for a giant chess (on 16x16) I am exploring, for few weeks now, two compound bent-riders that I called Simurgh: Gryphon + Bishop and Qilin: Manticore + Rook. In the same game I have also the Godzilla, not new, which is Gryphon+Manticore.

They are very strong pieces. They need a crowdy large board.

@Aurelian

The pieces you're proposing, with, as you say, less emphasis on centralisation in exchange for greater power at range, remind me a little of a more organic way to achieve what Big Outer Chess was going for. I wouldn't worry a priori about a ‘lack of personality’ from being part‐leaper and part‐rider; even things like the Archbishop have plenty of character, and there's certainly a distinctiveness to such a dispersed pattern of movement

As for partial bent riders, if not the chiral ones what about Ships/Snaketongues or their sideways or (as yet unattested afaik) crabwise counterparts?

The compound cannon would indeed probably deserve careful handling

@Jean‐Louis

Your Godzilla is not particularly less new than your Simurgh/Qilin: Gilman gives the latter two as respectively Metropolitan and Ancress — and even uses them in Four‐Linepiece Fusion — though ofc it makes sense that you minght prefer to stick with the monster theme for the names.

That said, whilst duplication of ‘Simurgh’ is fine (Gilman uses it for the viceroy‐then‐bishop viceroy‐then‐rook which only exists in 3D (or hex)), it seems odd to me that you'd choose to duplicate Qilin, which is just the Chinese version of Japanese Kirin, i.e. the familiar FD

@Bn Em: yes I knew about Qilin vs Kirin, Kylin, but it's just a working name for me at this stage. I wanted to stick with something more or less dragon-like. Thanks for pointing me to 4 Linepiece Fusion.

I also have some Rook-strength pieces: Longdebeest (Ö in my notation, CFX) and Dove (Ď in my notation, fFvDbsNbAvHfG). Both are majors; both are also weird (especially Dove).

{Also I think about new piece category, Mezor, which are minor in most variants, but become major in drop variants (such as my Warrior, Copper, Silver, Wildebeest, several Argentinian hoppers, etc.)}

@Jean-Louis, Well, the pieces you mention are not rook strength though! There is also tripunch chess where bishop+manticore and rook+gryphon are featured.

@Lev,

Please expand a bit on mezors! I don't understand what you mean!

@Bn Em

The lack of personality comes from replacing some short moves with other short moves. Most people won't like that I'm afraid!

It's arguably a little bit of a stretch to call Camel/Zebra leaps genuinely short; normally that refers to anything within two king‐moves away (The Short‐range project differs a bit on this, but partly because a lot of those games (especially Joe Joyce's) tend towards even larger boards). So your proposed pieces have the same kind of personality (broadly speaking) as Tamerlane's Giraffe (which in turn leads to the question of that piece's value — might it be comparable to a rook?)

On a 12x12 board camel and zebra are as short as the knight is on a 8x8 (the same ratio between the longest move and the board length). I'm sure that there exists a large enough board where Giraffe=Rook. The pieces I mention are maybe more like a giraffe that can move to dababah and threeleaper spaces.

If you want edge-seeking pieces, you could use hook movers that can only turn a corner after some (large) number of steps. E.g. B-then-R that can make a 45-degree turn only after making 6 or more diagonal steps. In the center of a 12x12 board this is just a normal Bishop. But in the corner of an empty board it would cover 1/4 of the board.

I had never thought about bend hook movers. Thanks for pointing these pieces out. Anyway, the thing that I was asking myself is how weird would be the pieces I was talking about for a more regular chess player. Probably pretty much, given the fact that I have met players who see the Capablanca pieces too complex. I don't understand why, but anyway!

Well, taking away the first few steps of a slider (but keep the remaining moves blockable on those squares), and replacing those by leaper moves away from the path is a good way to make new pieces without altering the value too much. I did the same in the Silly Sliders army for CwDA, replacing the W steps of the Rook by F, and the F steps of Bishop by W, and the K steps of the Queen by N. If you also replace the second move of each slide by a direct leap, the value would probably increase (by about a Pawn), as those moves were blockable, and the leaps no longer are.

Pieces without any stepping moves are rather cumbersome to manoeuvre, though.

BTW, better to write afyafW than yafafW: the latter already changes to Rook after the first step, so it does W+R+R. This is still a minimum of 3 steps, but for larger distance the R+R part can be realized through many diffeent intermediate squares. (It really describes a 'degenerate' hook mover, with two sliding legs.) This would slow down the Interactive Diagram's AI, which is not clever enough to recognize the moves as the same, and would try to search all of them. With W+W+R there is always only a single realization.

In the case of afyafWZ even if 4 of the moves are not blocked as they were in the second rook squares, the Z squares are longer and more often off board. I think you are correct though in assessing the this piece is a bit stronger than a rook.

BTW: I like the silly sliders and the daring dragons quite much!

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.

@HG,

Things I love!

Have you thought about lame versions of the Slip Queen or Skip Queen, or mixtures of the two (e.g. the compound of a Slip Rook and a Skip Bishop)? These have similar mobility to a Rook on any size board.

Please expand a bit on mezors! I don't understand what you mean!

 It's a category of chessmen who have mating position but cannot reach it.

Not on this category, but I also will note that Commoner also has a power near the Rook.

@HG, I'm using the Tamerlane giraffe but with the caveat that it can stop at camel square, and a manticore that must do 2 steps at least (may stop at knight suquares). That in different games. What you say, I have not considered. I did consider something even weirder though, because the two above mentioned pieces are hard to develop in the opening I have considered pieces that have the first step pass through pieces another of a few others blockable and then ordinary. Also, now you got me thinking about sky rooks combined with Tamerlane picket like pieces.

@Lev, Thanks!