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Combo Modern Day Chess. Guard replaces the Queen. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Mon, Nov 6, 2006 04:20 AM UTC:
well i don't understand something here, if the 'guard' can move 1 or 2
squares in any direction, it must be easily more powerful than the knight
or bishop, but you say it is not as strong as these pieces ... even a
piece that can move like a 'king' is more powerful than a knight or
bishop.
Joe and i recently put out 'the shortrange project', and in these
variants we have a 'sliding general' (moves 1 or 2 squares any
direction) or a 'queen-2-slider' (moves like a queen, but only 1 or 2
squares), and both of these are easily more powerful than the humble yet
beautiful bishop and knight.
so either i don't understand how your guard moves, or you don't realise
how powerful it is :)

Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Nov 6, 2006 04:26 AM UTC:
I think this is a rather nice game. Of course I'm prejudiced; it clearly
fits the ShortRange Project. But I can't rate it because it has
precedents and close relatives that Christine Bagley-Jones and I, among
others, have designed. I reference 'Modern Shatranj', posted at this
site, and its shatranj to chess discussion, especially steps 4 and 5 and
Roberto Laviere's piece suggestion for the guard. With Roberto's 2-step
general, step 5 is 'Combo Modern Day Chess'. The game mentioned for step
4 is 'Hypermodern Shatranj' which was released last weekend. You can find
that ZRF and a number of closely-related others at the Zillions site under
recent releases as 'The ShortRange Project'. Short descriptions of the
released games may be found on this site at the end of the
recently-released Piecelopedia article 'The ShortRange Project'. [Sorry
I've been slow in getting pages posted here.]
With that all said, I do think this is a rather nice game. And it's to be
expected that extremely similar or identical games will show up more and
more often. Glad to see someone else is looking at shortrange pieces.
Welcome to the discussion. [And you might want to use either the
double-guard or queen-2-slider icon for the guard piece in your preset,
just to prevent confusion - at least, I always screw up when icons are
used for different pieces.] Enjoy.

Joe Joyce wrote on Mon, Nov 6, 2006 04:36 AM UTC:
Hey, Christine - you beat me to the comment. And you're right, that guard is certainly more powerful that Tony gives it credit for. The basic 1-step guard is worth more than either knight or bishop. The 2-step piece is worth more than a rook. And it's not that bad an attacking piece, either.

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