Comments by panther

@ Jean-Louis

If I looked at the right pictures in one of your earlier links (title of it including 'recent', I think), I didn't like the second Centaur option pictured because I thought it reminded me rather more of a bishop, at least without looking too carefully.

Perhaps that can be 'solved' if it's possible to include a lot more of the base of a knight, maybe even up to horse neck level, including much thicker 'carved lines' at the spine (maybe certain Staunton sets are that way?), and having the bend of the figurine somehow eliminated could be good.

I'm not sure a reverse centaur isn't considered a type of centaur by at least some people, but yes, it isn't the archetype. Still, the guard symbol on top of the knight figurine is what was decided on for Alfaerie 2D figurines, at least, as Daniel is alluding to.

Calling a Centaur piece type a Judge was something I did when somehow I thought I saw no entry for NWF in wikipedia the first time I looked at a fairy pieces wiki (maybe edited since, or I missed it), before I applied to and looked at CVP site. A 3D figurine for a judge-person may be easier to imagine and create, who knows. On the bright side, there are nothing but real people (or rook) represented among Sac Chess pieces, i.e. nothing mythical used for CV warfare in my CV's case.

Either that, or use a spikey style hairdo on the knight, like a punk-look. :)

Maybe the age he wanted to have a child was his (inside) joke. It seems his wife and the Lord may have gone along with it quite happily - the latter is thought to have a good sense of humour.

There is also more than one mention of the use of 42 in the scriptures, not just the most terrifying instance towards the end, to further complicate the number of possibilities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)#:~:text=There%20are%2042%20generations%20(names,)%3B%20God%2C%20because%20of%20a%20%22

Re: "If the idea is to represent the move, the logical form in a set where the Amazon is a Staunton Knight with the head of a Staunton Queen mounted on top of it, would be a King's head on a Knight. The cross could be omitted for the non-royal case."

I'd trusted that Fergus had already thought of that and hadn't found a way to make it work, for some reason. It'll be interesting to see if anyone else can, as it would avoid using a 'reverse centaur' figurine. Maybe a Man's head (from Piececlopedia page for that) on top of a knight could be even better.

From Google blurb, when I searched for 'meaning of reverse centaur':

A reverse centaur has the head of a horse (non-human, relatively stupid, but trainable) and the body of a man complete with human hands. It's the human hands that are the key.Jun 27, 2023

I edited my last post a bit.

I haven't dug back thru all the comments, but has it been suggested that a Centaur might be represented by a tall piece (like a Staunton K's base) with a horse's head on it (like a Staunton N's head)?

Such a piece could become royal simply by adding a cross on top, if desired, as Jean-Louis did with an earlier image he gave (except that in that one, the base was not as tall as for a Staunton chess K, if I recall right).

edit: another possibility is to use the base of the Man, up to the neck, from the picture in the Piececlopedia entry for a Man, and put a horse's head on it.

edit2: a possible issue with any of these ideas is if a horse's head's weight might make such a piece fall down fairly easily; perhaps a slender-sort of horse's head might avoid that.

Re: do it properly or not at all: The Wright brothers did not wait for a more effective solution before they made their idea for an airplane known. They put it out there, like a placeholder, perhaps for others to improve upon (and they eventually did). The way of a pioneer is not easy, and often unprofitable for the self.

Seems good so far as a rough attempt. If you want any further inspiration, you may recall the old 'The Mighty Hercules' TV cartoon had a young centaur sidekick named Newton for that main character - e.g. you may find the old show in places on YouTube.