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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]My understanding is that the Half-Duck moves as a (1,1)- (2,0)- or (3,0)-leaper; that is, it can move one square diagonally or two or three squares orthogonally, regardless of whether there are pieces on the intervening squares.
thanks thomas - can someone else confirm this please?
Yes. The name Half-Duck comes from Ralph's 'funny notation' for the piece: HFD. The H and D components are leapers like the Knight--they can leap over pieces of either side or empty sqaures and any combination of these. All of this is 100% clear form Ralph's original CWDA pages.
thanks. the charging knight can move like a king 'sideways and backwards' - does that include a single backwards diagonal move?
Greg Strong wrote on Tue, Oct 4, 2005 04:32 PM UTC:Yes, that does include the backwards diagonal move. The Charging Knight can move to 5 squares a King can move to, and 4 squares a Knight can move to.
Ralph, I love your idea of Different Armies, since it can be applied without limitation to any kinds of armies, subjected to a critical analysis of their respective 'values' (as you did in another page) to equilibrate the Game.
ok i have my rating cap on :) well this game is a legend in chess variant world, so i'll start here, great fun with different armies :)
in hexagonal chess the army the color cound clobberers would be a misnomer beacause none of the pieces are colorbound! So you would have to give it a new name how about the bishop bashers?
new army idea: swift splicers bishop: the deacon moves as a four square bishop plus spacious wazir rook; the fourfer from the meticulous mashers the fourfer a four square rook plus ferz knight; the waffle alfil plus wazir queen the general a four square queen plus two square crab rider or an alternate queen the admiral: a four square queen plus two square chinese rider
That game sounds awesome! I might tell you an idea of a chess army...once I think of it...
CDWA's one advantages is that it can be expanded. Maybe CWDA is chess's future.
I also thought my test set named 'Crowned Nobility',but it could be too stupid.
*The Rooks: the Crowned rook
(Rooks puls King)
*The Bishop:the Crowned bishop
(Bishop plus King)
*The Knight: the Crowned knight
(Knight plus king)
*The Queen: the Fool
(Moves like a King -- a nonroyal King)
Dandalo, email me please to discuss your CDA idea...if you get a chance - Jeremy chessvariants@gmail.com
The problem with this game is that it is too complex. It is already difficult to remember how pieces move in all these different armies, not speaking about more advanced strategy or tactics... For ordinary chess players pieces, which combine moves of existing pieces, like R+N or B+N, have more chances to attract the attention.
To Jeremy Good: Thanks for your enthusiasm,but I have realised that my tentative set is indiscreet. To devise is more difficile than I thought. I decided to let 'Crowned Nobility' set have a vulnerable spot to balance too powerful 'Crowned Pieces'. Maybe I make an inept thing again. *The Rooks: the Crowned rook (Rooks puls King) *The Bishop:the Crowned bishop (Bishop plus King) *The Knight: the Crowned knight (Knight plus king) *The Queen: the Figurehead (It can't be moved.It also can't capture. Enemy can capture it.) To Andreas Kaufmann: Your opinion hitted the nail. Easier rule would apeal to more favorers. Alought CWDS would not be in vouge,CWDA is still an excellant and interesting variant.
'Crowned Nobiliby' is abortive. I have an another idea :'Torrid Firework' The Knights: The Armed Pao Armed Pao slides orthogonally, and captures by jumping or as Wazir. I strenghen Pao coming from Xiangqi. Original Pao is relatively weak in Chess because King does not live in Ninecastle. Now this more aggressive weapon can capture enemy berfore its eyes by moving one square orthogonally. I also did the same thing in Vao. The Bishops: the Armed Vao Armed Pao slides diagonally, and captures by jumping or as Ferz. The Queen: the Armed Leo Combined Armed Pao with Armed Vao, Armed Leo slides diagonally or orthogonally, and captures by jumping or as Commoner. The Rook: the Half Duck Borrowed from 'Remarkable Rookies', Half Duck is an excellent partner to Armed Pao and Armed Leo. I have tested 'Torrid Firework' in Zillions. I thought that 'Torrid Firework' is as equal as the other teams. Maybe it is eligible, I hope.
Half Duck in 'Torrid Firework' is probably a little power. I created 'Hood Rook' to instead of Half Duck. A Hood Rook jumps two squares orthogonally , or jumps three squares orthogonally. Hood-Rook: moves as Dabaaba, or jumps 3 squares orthogonally.
In my opinion, the cardinal IS stronger than the FIDE Queen. If a king is at a1 and a cardinal was at c3, the king is checkmated. However, there is NO WAY for a FIDE queen to mate on its own.
It seems that queen in Nutty Nights (what ever its name is) is really a clumsy piece in defence and can not come back to aid once it goes too far. Hence many end games which are otherwise won, get lost (saying that after playing few test games). It would be better to at least add a 2 step backward rook move with it to have a fair and balanced game.
In my experience, the flexibility of the Charging-Knight in the Nutty Knights team makes it somewhat stronger then a Bishop. The Colourbound Clobberers' lack of a piece that moves by ranks and files makes them slightly susceptible to back-rank mate treats.
The link for logs doesn't display most CDA games. Where are they all hidden I wonder? An important resource missing.
The last part of what Joyce describes is Chess with Different Armies. In fact, Ralph Betza thinks CDA is Track One material. Betza holds up CDA as his one great contribution. Like Pocket Mutation CDA seems to be played less now even in CVP. /// Right, that's surprising. I was figuring you saw my comment. The two comments appear written from the same template simultaneously, rbn etc. -- I confirm Joyce's was posted simultaneously when I looked for mine before anyone could have read throught it. /// Probably even Lasker himself proposed RBNQKNBR around the time Capablanca did 8x10 (RN) and (BN), but I have to look it up. Hutnik is referring to this
nearchess at 'multiformations'.
http://www.chessvariants.org/displaycomment.php?commentid=18623
The Half Duck has a range 3 jump. It is very easy to attack King behind a row of pawns without being threatened. I adviced that Half Duck can't have 3 jump as long as a piece standing on front of 2 jump square.
In fact, I lost to Paulowich just that way to Half Duck of Colourbound Clobberers at the G.C. Logs here game ended 8.November.2004, a very early score. Paulowich said take back the last move and I said ''It's too Ralph Betza ridiculous not to end it here.'' You can see the exchange within in 8.Nov.2004 record under this very article at Game Courier logs, just commented by ''unknown'' 19.September about a dozen comments back. So it was checkmate on the fifth move, and I have always liked Half Duck. I notice even Chess Different Armies has 14 complete games in 6 years. If there were any serious enterprises of any kind around here, there would have been 14,000 complete games by now of something touted as important as CDA. Guaranteed the status quo will have the 4000 CVP games averaging 2-10 games played each by 2020, and guaranteed someone will think up another Half Duck variant.
As I noted in my earlier comment / query, the logs link doesn't list but a fraction of those that have actually been played on this site. So there is something wrong with that listing. Vitya Makov alone has completed more than twice as many (completed) games of CDA than are listed by that link. Still not as many as thousands but more than a couple dozen played by Vitya alone (in less than a year). Try changing the Game Filter to display Chess with Different Armies and you can see them. It's at least enough to show that Vitya has a burgeoning interest in playing CDAs and not just inventing them. I do too.
As for the Half-Duck, it's a popular piece used already in some other variants, notably as the Lion in Paulowich's Lions and Unicorns. The objection doesn't speak to Betza's own description of why he uses it. I myself have plans for a lame half-duck in forthcoming CDA.
[The size of an audience is not a reliable measure of the excellence of a production.]
[btw, there is no shame in losing to Paulowich and losing to him probably speaks less to the supposedly overpowered character of the Half-Duck than to the strength of Paulowich who has beaten me several times too.]
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