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Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, May 16, 2021 08:05 AM UTC in reply to Greg Strong from Sat May 15 09:50 PM:

For aesthetic reasons I would  like to avoid divergent and asymmetric pieces. So if there is a 'full-atom' alternative, I would prefer that. And symmetry breaking would be preferable over divergence. (Because it is what the Nutters do. None of Betza's armies had divergence, though.) Tinkering with the super-piece is also less course than with pieces of which you have a pair.

A 58% result against FIDE is not out of line with what the other established armies do. (In fact they all have worse advantage.) One can also argue that in human play it is a good thing to disadvantage FIDE a bit, because of its familiarity. So I think A or D moves on the Squire are a satisfactory solution. And it doesn't alter the Squire's 'footprint'; it would still be a sliding version of a Squirrel.

It is just a matter of choosing between A and D, which appear to give an equal boost. The army already has D moves through the Diamond. So perhaps I should go for the A moves on the Squire; it seems to me the ability of pieces to attack each other without being automatically attacked back contributes a lot to making play interesting.