H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Dec 18, 2018 10:31 AM UTC:
Although the official definition of 'modest variant' can perhaps be stretched a little, I don't think it should ever apply to variants like Grand Chess. With two extra super-pieces and a 50% larger board there is not much modest about it. (Or to its inventor? ;-) )
My own design Elven Chess is a Grand-Chess-like variant that uses crowned pieces rather than knighted ones. Next to Crowned Rook and Bishop it also features plain Commoners (which could be considered crowned pawns). Instead of a Centaur I used the Chu-Shogi Lion, however. Of which the Centaur is a sub-set, but which can also be considered as a King with extra King moves (but sequentially).
Crowned pieces are surprisingly impopular, in western chess variants. (In Shogi, OTOH...). BTW, the army you propose is mainly weaker because 'crowning' adds only 4 moves to Rook and Bishop, while 'knighting' adds 8. In addition the amazing synergy between B and N that beefs up the Archbishop value by nearly 2 Pawns is absent in the Crowned Bishop. And the Centaur is the weakest of the common super-pieces even on 8x8, and enlarged boards only makes this worse because of its low speed. So where the unorthodox pieces in Grand Chess have value 9.5, 9 and 8.75, in your proposal they have only 8, 7 and 5.25.
Although the official definition of 'modest variant' can perhaps be stretched a little, I don't think it should ever apply to variants like Grand Chess. With two extra super-pieces and a 50% larger board there is not much modest about it. (Or to its inventor? ;-) )
My own design Elven Chess is a Grand-Chess-like variant that uses crowned pieces rather than knighted ones. Next to Crowned Rook and Bishop it also features plain Commoners (which could be considered crowned pawns). Instead of a Centaur I used the Chu-Shogi Lion, however. Of which the Centaur is a sub-set, but which can also be considered as a King with extra King moves (but sequentially).
Crowned pieces are surprisingly impopular, in western chess variants. (In Shogi, OTOH...). BTW, the army you propose is mainly weaker because 'crowning' adds only 4 moves to Rook and Bishop, while 'knighting' adds 8. In addition the amazing synergy between B and N that beefs up the Archbishop value by nearly 2 Pawns is absent in the Crowned Bishop. And the Centaur is the weakest of the common super-pieces even on 8x8, and enlarged boards only makes this worse because of its low speed. So where the unorthodox pieces in Grand Chess have value 9.5, 9 and 8.75, in your proposal they have only 8, 7 and 5.25.