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H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 12 08:39 PM UTC in reply to Jörg Knappen from 06:44 PM:

A little bit of playtesting with the interactive diagram it looks like the basic premise doesn't work out: It is not only possible but also advised to exchange one of the missiles by striking at your opponents missile. White is practically forced to follow this path, otherwise Black would get a free second strike. Black eliminates White second missile in the counter-strike.

This seems more a problem with the initial setup than with the concept. I gues sthis occurs because it is possible for a Missile to fork the two opponent Missiles in the opening move. I don't have much leeway there, though, if I want every explosion location on the 2nd rank to destroy about the same value, accounting for the Missile staart squares to be empty.

I could make the Missiles immune for explosion though; the 'fork' in the current setup is not by two direct hits. This makes sense, as Missiles are supposed to be kept in hardened silos, which would require a direct hit to damage them. If only a direct attack on one of the Missiles would result from the opening move, black would simply move the attacked Missile away to position it for his own attack.

Blowing up a royal could be a tactic; I tried to set it up such that you don't destroy much less when you do that. A second royal King is worth nearly

 a Rook in Spartan Chess, and might be worth more here due to the large number of super-pieces. I put the most valuable super-pieces (Queen and Squire) next to the royals, and put the latter so far from the Missiles that the blast to destroy a royal would not hit the (presumably empty) Missile start square. So that you also get an extra minor from the 2nd rank.

Even hitting one of the Dragon Horses could be a viable tactic. You would destroy 5 rook-class pieces (including the royal) plus a minor (which I now made the Bishop, which is the most-valuable minor on such a large board). That seems a bit less than destroying 3 super-pieces plus two minors, which you could get by striking elsewhere. But for those strikes the Rhino would be amongst the super-piece victims, and this is a relatively weak super-piece (about halfway between Queen and Rook on 8x8). Plus that you would get a very significant manifestation of the leveling effect, when the opponent still has so many super-pieces that you could harrass with your Rooks and Dragon Horses. So it might be more even than it looks.


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