Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Short castling seems to break the interactive diagram.

I value thematic consistency, which is the only reason I added Zebras at all. Maybe I go too far with it at times. I do think they serve a functional role too by protecting the edge pawns. An Alfil-Zebra might be an interesting piece, but I wouldn't use it here because that would break the theme, unless the knights were made FN. I also don't want to have only very strong pieces; there are plenty of those already. I used zebras for aesthetic reasons; whether that choice makes for the best game, I cannot say.

The AZ is a quite strong piece. It does not have mating potential, but is powerful enough to drive a bare King into a corner on boards up to 9x9. So it can pretty much checkmate in combination with anything. Even with an Alfil.

The Camel and the Zebra never seemed very useful to me. Combining a Camel and a Ferz gives us the Wizard which functions well in many variants, from Wormhole Chess to TenCubed Chess. I wonder if combining a Zebra and an Alfil would improve this game? Sample endgame provided below - the diagram has been cut down to six ranks.

WHITE wins by 1.Nc2 check Kb1 2.(Z+A)e3 mate.

The Checkmating Applet cannot do bent riders like Osprey. But it can do a truncated leaping version, like DC. And a pair of these does have mating potential, on 10x10. In the theory of 3-vs-1 mates discussed on the Applet page the Osprey would classify as 'potent', since it can switch its attack from c1 to a1 in a singly move (e.g. f2-f4 or f2-d2). This means it can execute mates in combination with almost anything else that is not bound to the same color.

In fact an Osprey can drive a bare King into a corner together with almost anything on any size board: positioned on an edge it can dynamically confine a King in a corner with the help of its own King. With moves to spare, which can be used to invoke the additional piece.

W^B is referred as Manticore on CVP. An Aanca is F^R, Gryphon here. This is an old tiring discussion.

As far as I can tentatively estimate, on 10x10 an Osprey (D^B) would be worth about the same as a W^B (referred to by Betza as an Aanca, in his article on evaluating Bent Riders, at least)).

It would be interesting to know, if the Osprey piece type were to be used in a later CV (e.g. a 10x10 one), where stalemate is considered only to be a draw, whether king plus two opposite-coloured Ospreys could generally force checkmate vs. a lone king. I've already imagined at least one mating situation being possible.