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Critter Mate Chess. Minichess, but the king has a magical familiar. (6x6, Cells: 36) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Fri, Mar 1, 2024 01:58 PM UTC:

Interesting. Few friendly comments and suggestions.

Name: as it is based on a (rare) 6x6 board, I was thinking to ... sanskrit, as we had Ashtapada and Dashtapada for 8x8 and 10x10 in old Indian texts, why not a Shatpada, shat meaning 6.

Familiar is strange because those added pieces are not at all familiar.

Pieces: for sake of consistency, I regret that the Hound and the Wild Cat are not able to leap when moving as non-Knight. I mean, now we have Hound=W2N and W.Cat=F2N. However Corvus may leap and is WAN. Have you thought of having Hound=WDN and W.Cat=FAN so they would leap to the 2nd square as well?

One more piece could be then added is FND (moving 1-diag or leaping 2 orth or as Knight)

Name of pieces: Corvus and FND are never used in chess variants or I missed it (which is possible).

KAD (your Hippogryph) is better known as Mammoth. It is also found as Mastodon, Pasha, Squire. Too bad to invent a new name if not really needed.

ADN (your J.Crocodile) is MUCH better known as Squirrel. Also found as Bear (in Russian Bear Chess) or Castle. Again too bad to invent a new name if not needed.

If you change Hound and W. Cat, WDN and FAN have been used as Minister and High Priestess. However those 2 were for a specific game, I would prefer your names here. THose pieces are not often used anyway.

Thank you