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Two exciting new pieces are featured here. Hero and Shaman are the best (perhaps the only) inclusive compounds designed for use in a chess variant that does not rely on overpowered pieces.
Two set of colorbound pieces create some interesting possibilities, which I have continued to explore on a 10x10 board in Opulent Lemurian Shatranj. I decided to replaced the War Elephant (FAD) with a similar, but nonleaping, piece.
David, thank you very much. Of pieces I've designed, the Hero and Shaman are my two favorite straight chess pieces, if you can call a pair of twisty shatranj pieces that. This game and these 2 pieces are the furthest I've gone so far in shortrange development in a standard chess environment. They came from the flexible and twisted knights of Atlantean Barroom Shatranj, when I realized I could cut those 2 pieces in half and still have a piece that was almost as powerful and considerably simpler. Originally they were set up in the standard rook and bishop positions, with a knight between them, all flanking a king and guard. After pushing pieces a little, I came to the conclusion that the knights were redundant, so I replaced them with the heroes; and then I had the 2 corner squares empty. Now I needed a piece that was shortrange and reasonably but not too powerful, and that could be developed without too many contortions in a game with shatranj [1-step] pawns. The FAD seemed ideal to me, as it is both powerful and limited, being unblockable, quite shortrange, and colorbound. [The specific starting squares of all the colorbound pieces has, I think, a lot to do with why and how this game works.] Finally, I replaced the queen analog, the guard, with the hawklet/bent sliding general, as it has a fair chance of taking out a piece attacking itself or the king, unlike a guard, which cannot even block the other pieces, much less defend against or make a serious attack on them. While I was working on everything in the above paragraph, this game spun off a variant of its own, which got posted first - Chieftain Chess. And that game started my foray into the really large variants.
Lemurian Temple Shatranj Jeremy Good asked me to design a game that used the linear hero and shaman the other day. Recently, I've been thinking about the 'double-wazir', a complement to David Paulowich's Opulent Lemurian Shatranj war elephant/free padwar. If it moves 2, it winds up on exactly the same squares as the war elephant, but can change color, so keeping Andy Maxson happy. Anyway, after very little thought, this is what I came up with as a prototype: P - standard shatranj pawn R - replaced with double-wazir, no null moves N - replaced with linear Hero, D+W; steps 1 and/or leaps 2 orthogonally B - replaced with linear Shaman, A+F; steps 1 and/or leaps 2 diagonally Q - replaced with H/S combo piece K - inclusive compound W+F; moves as 1 component, then stops or may move as the other component [ref: Piecelopedia, 'Moo'] This leads to a few questions: Does this play okay on an 8x8, or must these pieces be moved to a larger board? Is the king too strong, leading to mating problems? What are the promotion rules, and is there a non-royal king equivalent that can always be promoted to?
Ralph Betza considers that particular two move ferz that is allowed the null move, therefore rifle shoot, to be close in value to a FAD. Your own two move pieces, without the rifle shoot, are weaker. Lemurian Shatranj works on an 8 x 8 board and has more powerful pieces than the ones you include in Lemurian Temple Shatranj. Quoting from Betza:
p.s. I think it would be more fun to allow the doublemove pieces rifle shoots. - j.g.
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The Sliding General has been used in Adrian King's 16x16 variant Jupiter, under the name Hawklet. The 'Hawklet' piece is also listed in the Generic Chess Piece Creation System.
One of these days I will post the rules for my 'subvariant' of Lemurian Shatranj, which replaces the War Elephants with Rooks.