Single Comment

This article is talking as if Augmented Chess was based on augmenting Different Armies, with its question of how do you augment a <b>BD</b> or a <b>FAD</b>, but the published version of Augmented Chess is based on augmenting the FIDE army. It seems to me that the only colorbound piece that needs to be augmented is the Bishop, which is an interesting issue still. <p> The interesting thing about augmenting the Bishop in this variant is that while you can give a colorbound augmentation to it (producing, say, a <b>BD</b>), that only helps one of them -- the one on the opposite color will never be augmented. This might be OK, as it yields a weak piece, and weak pieces can be useful and interesting, since you can threaten trades (is an Archoniclastic <b>NW/N</b> worth more or less than a Bishop?). Alternatively, as Augmented Chess offers alternate Knights and Queens, alternate Bishops could be offered. <p> What sort of alternate Bishops? You want Bishop replacements that: <p> <ul> <li>Are not colorbound;</li> <p> <li>Are worth almost the same as a Bishop;</li> <p> <li>And <i>feel</i> something like a Bishop to play with.</li> </ul> <p> That's a tall order. I have a couple of unscientific proposals: <blockquote> <h4>The Crybaby (WAA)</h4> Sort of a super-Waffle, the difference between <b>A</b> and <b>AA</b> is probably small enough to account for the difference between a Waffle and a Bishop, and it moves sort of Waffle-like. <h4>The Crabinal (ffNbsNhhB)</h4> It's bishop-like and not colorbound, but it is hard to augment, since of the original augmentors, only the <b>W</b> and the <b>D</b> work with it. </blockquote> <p> An alternative approach would be to render Bishops not-colorbound by using <i>Kristensen</i> Bishops (<b>mfbWB</b>). But this makes Bishops clearly more powerful than Knights, which is very likely undesirable. <p> Well, I've chattered on enough for now . . . <p> PBA