H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, May 6, 2021 11:55 AM UTC:
Thank you. I admit that of the armies I designed I like the Silly Sliders best, aesthetically. Unfortunately I couldn't do much testing, as my main PC broke down. I would really like to do some testing on the Onyx; in fact that piece is what gave me the idea for this army. I was looking for a non-colorbound version of the Bishop, for measuring whether the B-pair bonus would really disappear in that case. Because there is an alternative explanation for this bonus, namely that two diagonal slides on opposit square shades cooperate exceptionally well. Playing Bishops against Onyxes in pairs or singletons could decide this matter.
A second point of interest would be whether the penalty for a leap being lame depends on whether the square where the leap can be blocked is attacked by the piece itself, or not. In a sense all distant slider moves are lame leaps, but they cannot be blocked without exposing the blocker to one of those. Playing Onyx + Duck vs Bishop + Rook would be a 'low-noise' experiment for investigating this. Between them they have exactly the same moves, which can be blocked the same way, but the Onyx and Duck do not attack the adjacent blocking squares, while the Bishop and Rook do.
Interesting that the name Duck was used for FDD by Jelliss. This has a very similar footprint. Is it known which variant employed this piece? If i is imporant to keep the distinction between these pieces, I could change mine to 'Lame Duck'.
Thank you. I admit that of the armies I designed I like the Silly Sliders best, aesthetically. Unfortunately I couldn't do much testing, as my main PC broke down. I would really like to do some testing on the Onyx; in fact that piece is what gave me the idea for this army. I was looking for a non-colorbound version of the Bishop, for measuring whether the B-pair bonus would really disappear in that case. Because there is an alternative explanation for this bonus, namely that two diagonal slides on opposit square shades cooperate exceptionally well. Playing Bishops against Onyxes in pairs or singletons could decide this matter.
A second point of interest would be whether the penalty for a leap being lame depends on whether the square where the leap can be blocked is attacked by the piece itself, or not. In a sense all distant slider moves are lame leaps, but they cannot be blocked without exposing the blocker to one of those. Playing Onyx + Duck vs Bishop + Rook would be a 'low-noise' experiment for investigating this. Between them they have exactly the same moves, which can be blocked the same way, but the Onyx and Duck do not attack the adjacent blocking squares, while the Bishop and Rook do.
Interesting that the name Duck was used for FDD by Jelliss. This has a very similar footprint. Is it known which variant employed this piece? If i is imporant to keep the distinction between these pieces, I could change mine to 'Lame Duck'.