George Duke wrote on Fri, Mar 19, 2010 03:48 PM UTC:
Hutnik voices this weave in favour of the Eurasian Pawn, defined within. Expropriating somewhat, from Next Chess standpoint, in general should Western Pawn be changed? Unlike pieces,
Pawns seem designed belatedly to fit each game. Infrequently does a CV
start with Pawns and work outwards to pieces. Yet some have no Pawns at
all, as Gilman's http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MScommediadellar and his more important Pawnless Ecumenical somewhere. Now given new standard 8x10 CV like Great Shatranj, Mastodon, Falcon, Schoolbook, is Western Pawn ideal? Joyce's G.S. gives impression that its variant with standard full Pawn of the West is the preferred one. Whilst still 8-deep, either ''all the time two-stepping'' or ''origination three-step'' both in fact are unnecessary. Those two are the most common changes injected Pawns on 10x10 -- not employed in any of the four above. En passant and two-step origination are obviously a paired mutation. Like horse and carriage, you can't have one without the other. If eliminating the initial array two-step, en passant is automatically out the window as impossible. Pawn is the only regular ''divergent'' piece-type, meaning capturing differently. Western Pawn, despite seeming complexity in descriptive algorithm, is actually an over-all simplifier in obviating other compensating rules to keep everything balanced. What would be best alternative? [Gilman reference: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSmanandbeast04:.]
Not Berolina, which creates weird ugly open files. Bare-bones Shogi Pawns are okay vis-a-vis the other Shogi pipsqueak pieces, but not vis-a-vis the genuine western articles, R, N, B. Provisionally I vote for, so long as 8-deep, the ironically 10-deep Centennial omni-Pawn, called there Steward and Quadra-Pawn, implemented once or twice before Centennial, as best alternative. The Carrera-era 17th-century Western Pawn, ramifies far back into the 1500s too some places in full form before permanent establishment. Also divergent, omni-Pawns are radical departure for moving sideways and backwards too at option; Centennial incorrectly allows initial two-step. Any alteration in Pawns only is by and large VARIANT of an original CV, not new CV in and of itself, by responsible consensus post-CV-proliferation era.
