Rated Comments for a Single Item

The CHANGE is in the nature of a liberal drop, always available for Lion, Overtaker, Diamond, and Grand-Bishop. No licentious drop as in Shogi, and in fact no promotees at all, just the 8 piece-types on 81 squares. The HORIZONTAL is a more restricted drop applying to Pawns also. The Mage is 800-year-old Gryphon. I don't expect to use the bizarre cannibal provision. Three long-range D,M,B; and five one- or two-step K,U,E,P,L. In comparison, Achernar, having standard pieces, is weak sister.

Roberto Lavieri CVs feature cannibalism, like Kristensen's Chess, as secondary feature, being just convenience once in a while to open lines of attack. In fact, in Altair, still another 9x9, all the pieces may capture any friendly unit. Lavieri's Maxima is a major use like Rococo of 40-year-old Immobilizer. Altair's rank jumping as a non-capturing move, appearing again in Achernar, has to be unique. The Reducer is an Immobilizer adaptation, able by adjacency to 'Reduce' most enemy moving to one square only instead of full pattern. Highly tactical test of skill this Altair. Confining the King to the Fortress and the way of moving of the Soldier particularly give the 'Oriental flavour'. Overtaker -- like Cannon and Canon and Cannon Pawn(partly) and Orthodox Pawn and Divergent and most Outback Chess pieces -- always moves differently than it captures. The Diamond Warrior has a correspondence with the established commercial Omega Chess Champion and more closely is all but copied by newer Templar of A.A. de la Campa. The Lion-Man could be better described by Lavieri as a Queen restricted to one or two squares. Bent rider Mage, actually 800-year-old Gryphon, is re-used in later well-regarded Maxima.

Altair, in process between Carlos and myself, is almost embarrassingly neat game whilst at first seeming over-complicated. Lavieri should stick with Grand-Bishop and omit the alternatives. As noted in other thread we will revive, somehow '9x9's have disproportionate over 50% excellent. Tri-colour squares are necessary for *Ch*, in which most pieces may at any time ''drop'' themselves to vacant square three ranks removed, as a turn. Lavieri's best game over Maxima.

Altair is CV where "piece values are not a good indicator of one side's advantage in chess" to use V's current words, because most of the pieces for a move can also be dropped to empty square in rank nearby of the same color. Also they most of them can slide along their rank unimpeded. So if coming up with guide-values for stronger Mage and Lion and Diamond around 7, 5 and 4 respectively, good use of the board itself makes all the pieces closer to heuristic 3.8-4.2 each with only Pawns in some 2.x range.

Muller wrote up problem theme 3Q v. 7N in "Charge of Light Brigade." If you keep 8 Pawns, the 3 Queens versus 7 Knights may go to 3Q by already 8x10 any array, certainly by 10x10. Board used and Rules interact piece values, and cannot really be safely generalized even as to '<' or '>' for all cases; with special rules (or board) we can think of CV where even N>Q one on one!

For ex., make narrow stair step where Q can only occasionally go 3 or 2, but N leaps cross empty space and get values maybe N4 Q3 as convenient.

This is a cool game to play, though I myself had some slight difficulty with possible ambiguity to the wording of certain rules, as put forward on this page. One case I solved by looking at an earlier comment about this page that George made, in reply to someone's question about a rule. Other than that, the different colouring scheme of various ranks, and the purpose to that, is one nifty aspect of this game.