Comments by nelk114

As notorious as I am for getting things backwards

Looks to me like you've done it again… ;‌)

With the height (if not the style) of the headgear (and in the first image the barely‐noticeable arms), my first thought was rather of the Lamassu (a creature yet to be graced with a place in a CV)

But I agree it's probably the most centaurine piece model I've seen so far

One last detail: traditionally what you've put under Movement in the rules section is what the Pieces section is intended for. Whether you want to append it to that section as is or interleave it with the images is up to you.

Once that's done, this looks otherwise ready for publication

I think the use of ‘leaping’ where the other pawns simply ‘move’ suggests that they do, in fact, leap (making your diagram accurate)

It could have been made clearer, but it's not so difficult to find: locusts spawn in the square vacated by a moving king, or result from the demotion of a capturing Leo

I'm thinking that this is because there is not a lot of experience in games with jokers.

At least in my case that's very much the reason; in principle the dicussion is very interesting (especially since a game I've been thinking about would involve a closely‐related, if potentially even more powerful (though less apparently‐random) piece)

My impression is that jokers are a bit like Querquisites and Smess/Ivory‐Tower pieces, in that they depart substantially enough from normal Chess dynamics that they'd take a good bit of learning to handle. And in their particular case, the art of dealing with them is in part (principally?) the fact that they reduce the value of strong pieces, especially if well placed: you can't freely move the queen if there's a joker ready to copy its move while still being worth (on average, presumed — though of course this ‘chilling’ effect increases its value correspondingly to the powerful pieces on the board) less.

I'd be interested to see how Jokers handle in games with (a small number of) really powerful pieces. I'd almost predict that capturing the jokers to free the power pieces (with maybe some judicious moves by the latter in between either while the J is still hidden in the setup position, or to give check) would be an important middle‐game theme.

But in any case for now you're probably one of the people here with most experience with the J :‌)

Reading over this again, I have to agree Warmachinewazir still sticks out as an incredibly clunky name; since you already have Ferfil for the piece whose image is named Elephantferz, why not the corresponding (albeit apparently thus far confined to Gilman) Wazbaba?

@Kevin:

I'd missed/forgotten that particular objection to Wazaba/Wazbaba, and I do agree that if you don't like it then you ought to be free to not use it (though my search for the ⟨Wazaba⟩ form did turn up your own 4 Kings Quasi-Shatranj, for what it's worth). Though for what it's worth, alternative piece names for Orthochess pieces rarely become less idiomatic English, and as H.G. notes it's not the proliferation of names as such that's the issue here

I think there were only four games (the four I left, for now, unpublished: Accelerated and Unaccelerated Constabulary/‐ble Chess/‐spiel) using this name, and only once each; the WMW Chess/‐spiel setting files are of course more unfortunate OK never mind, I forgot about WIP's, but even there besides the WMW games the only other usage seems to be in Bureau‐Spiel, so only 5 mentions total excluding eponymous games

I'm fairly sure the sometimes awkward names of some more obscure pieces are part of what turned people off M&B (though even then, under C I only spot Canvalander, Cardirider/‐lander/‐runner (of which the first as Cardinalrider is relatively uncontroversial), a couple of Camel‐ pieces (all relatively obscure), and Cbehemoth/Cbuffoon/Cmutilator for (cool but almost wilfully awfully‐named) Brook‐style pieces — more than average, sure, but he names more pieces at all than average and most of these are fairly obscure, used only by himself if at all). The criticism applies validly there too (with different mitigating factors)

Most 3‐word compounds in English (‘whatsoëver’, ‘notwithstanding’, ‘albeit’, ‘inasmuch’, ⁊c.) tend not to be nouns ;‌) Or much of anything except moderately obscure grammatical particles. And nor is it a productive way of producing new words; they're all lexical fossils of sorts

In any case I personally won't insist too hard on the name; it's clunky, and in apparently the majority opinion unnecessarily so, but you seem to be very keen to keep it for whatever reason and ultimately the freedom to pick names (at least up to generating confusion) does stand

@H.G.:

Wazbaba is Gilman's spelling; I'd never noticed that most others uses lack the first b (and had thus assumed Haru's was a typo). As a wazir–dabbaba portmanteau I definitely prefer it with both ⟨b⟩s myself

@Bob:

Whilst I'm not as hardline as Jean‐Louis regarding ‘Aanca’ (for better or worse, it did build up a small history of use for W‐then‐B and imo at least in the context of variants from that time retains a little validity), I fail to see the wisdom in compounding the confusion (especially with an already‐controversial name) by assigning it to yet a third (especially so closely‐related) piece. If not ‘Godzilla’ for Gryphon+Rhino, there's always Gilmanese ‘Gorgon’ (used also by Frolov)

@Jean‐Louis:

I think Betza's error in Bent Sliders was not so much one of interpretation as one of judgment ;‌) He knew perfectly well it was “Spanish for [the piece with English name] Gryphon”

with D2 rather than D7 that rises to 159

My interpretation was that the forward‐only thing was just a pragmatic way of ensuring offensive play, sort of like a primitive cousin of the jeu forcé. Much in the same way as Draughts/Checkers has FO pieces.

So if I understand correctly, the diagonals thing is just the procedure for how you've generated what during gameplay is a static morphing table? Rather than having any dynamic effect during gameplay

I don't understand the morphing to Chancellor on d4, d6, f4, and f6; surely by this game's logic that would be a Queen morph, as it's on a diagonal with Rook and Bishop? (Which would mean that the Chancellor would not appear at all)