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Appeared in 4 Double-Acts Chess.

With my supply of pieces dwindling, I'll need these. Thanks! :)

And I’m again with suggestions:

Bullet, most recent

Three tricky birds

Stunt-based chessmen

The largest list

298. Chained Bishop, 299. Chained Rook, and 300. Chained Queen. These are related to (and, unconsciously, indirectly inspired by) the Helical Switchback Rhino and Griffin that were suggested to me by fellow CVP contributor Bn Em for Unnecessarily Complicated Chess. Given that today's my birthday and this set leads into #300, I thought it seemed like a fitting moment.

These pieces start by taking one step in the direction 45° from what the name would suggest: orthogonally for the Bishop, and diagonally for the Rook. They then turn 45° toward the intended general direction, step one space, then make another 45° turn the same direction (left or right) as the previous one, and continue making alternating turns of two left and two right (in either order) until reaching their destination.

For example, here's the Chained Bishop (Wafs(afqafz)Wafsafq(afzafq)W):

And the Chained Rook (Fafs(afqafz)Fafsafq(afzafq)F):

The Chained Queen, naturally, combines the two (Kafs(afqafz)Kafsafq(afzafq)K).

The marking for "Chained" was tossed together as a casual experiment, and I was surprised at how well it worked, at least to my eye.

I can imagine how "Chaining" could be applied to other pieces as well -- not just compounds like Chancellor and Archbishop, but also bent sliders like Rhino/Manticore and Eagle/Griffin, or even leaping sliders like Ostrich and Osprey or Tiger and Striped Dragon. (I'm not so sure how well a Chained Nightrider would work, though.)

Ah, that link works quite nicely.

So the basic Fairy in this case is basically WS, with that special property of making enemy pieces that target it switch sides for one turn. The swapping property of the more advanced versions are a bit more interesting, though if I'm doing a Fairy in Fairy Chess I'd want it to be more like what I proposed. (Not that the Discord version is a bad idea, of course; I may come up with something for the Fairy++ on the chart.)

How about this? https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/300133704750071808/779942631785758731/unknown.png?ex=664054ae&is=663f032e&hm=c1d9a777fff6bd71d82b7ce1daeddea276cfff56edda1a9868bfdfc6e13c21a7&

297. Paratrooper. There actually have been a few definitions for Paratrooper before, the most notable on this site being in Pawntrooper Chess, Invasion, and (on a rhombus board) Diamond Chess 306. All of those are quite legitimate takes, but I'm not sure that even the first two could be shown on an Interactive Diagram.

The version of Paratrooper that I propose can, by default, move two spaces in any orthogonal or diagonal direction (K2). It can also, if it's in the player's starting area, move without capture any distance along those lines, leaping over any number of pieces in the way (K2(paf)mQ).

(I just finished making this entry this morning, and my brain's been too tired to make a move diagram. I'll see if I can't rectify that tomorrow, and replace this paragraph with it.)

On an Interactive Diagram, the limitation for the longer move would be done with the morph function.

I wouldn't worry too much about the supports breaking on this; they're 3.25mm in diameter, and there are eight of them.

I'm unable to open that link in either Firefox or Discord.

I found another fairy piece called fairy in a message sent on 22/11/2020 by grey6436, AKA definitely not guhbuh#8296. https://discord.com/channels/300132117516648449/300133704750071808/779942632302444545

296. Corporal. The Corporal is the most basic "improved Pawn," moving for the most part like an orthodox Pawn except that its forward diagonal move does not require capture. (fFfmWifmnD)

I don't see this piece much, but I think the intent is that it will appear as an auxiliary to conventional Pawns.

The model is utilitarian, simple, and certaintly no less stable than an orthodox Pawn. (I based its look off the Musketeer icon for the piece.)

Yesterday was such a weird day that I forgot to post the PotD, even though by the end of the day I thought I'd done it. So...

295. Quarterback. Expanding on my set of pieces with an American Football theme, the Quarterback is probably the most complex of the lot.

The piece's basic move is to any space within a two-square range, but without leaping.

It also has two options for an initial move. The first is to "jump" the front line: it can leap two spaces in any direction forward; or it can leap over any piece in one of the three spaces directly in front of it to the second space beyond that, without capture.*

The other option for an initial move is the chess equivalent of a pass: the Quarterback swaps places with any friendly piece on the board. (K2nNifhSiffNipfampfamfhKipfampfhamfKimpfapsampz(vs)amfWimpfapsampszafsmWiudU)**

At first I thought I'd need to adjust this piece and make the stars smaller, but once it rendered fully I decided that that would be unnecessary.

(As for today's piece, I'll try to get that up this afternoon.)

*In the XBetza code, I'm frankly a little unsure about the part about jumping over a piece to the second beyond, even though I tested all four parts of that and they all worked as expected.

**Probably this would be much shorter with bracket notation; my brain isn't functioning right to figure it out right now, though.

294. Cerberus. There are multiple ideas of what Cerberus would be like as a chess piece; I figure that the Cerberus move should be triple that of a Dog. However, I've found two versions of Dog, one from large shogi variants and the other by Musketeer Chess (both of which I should post sometime soon; I thought I already had). I decided to base Cerberus off the latter.

The Musketeer Dog (which I like to call Big Dog) has a move of one space sideways or three spaces diagonally; that would give Cerberus a move of three sideways and nine diagonally. The latter seems enough that it might as well be a slide. (BsW3)

I think it would be interesting to see how existing games with their own version of Cerberus would fare with this in its place.

Modeling Cerberus as a chess piece is hard; mine isn't the only attempt at it. I think it does the job, though.

That's a possibility, if I can find a way to differentiate the piece from the regular Turtle (the move for which I still need to edit).

How about Three-Toed Box Turtle?

293. Three-Toed Sloth. As of this writing, fellow CVP user Bn Em has found the piece that would take the longest to force checkmate against a bare King, with only a King's help, and after looking at a diagram of its move I decided that it deserved a name, and probably some use in a game somewhere.

The choice of move is quite complex: it moves one step directly forward, or diagonally backward and to the right; or leaps two spaces diagonally forward and to the right, or backward and to the left; or leaps two spaces forward and one to the left; or makes one or two leaps of two spaces directly forward. (fWbrFfD2lfNfrblA)

Extra points (and, of course, due credit) to whomever can come up with a good name for fWblFfD2rfNflbrA (to go with this piece the way I created the Purple Finch to go with Adrian King's Blue Gecko). I think they'd be a fun addition to my Kagamigi games.

That's a rather fearsome-looking sloth, and probably needs a bit of reworking; I only just modeled it yesterday, and arguably didn't give it the time it needed (and that I normally give a piece like this) to really look right.

291. Señora (Argentinian Queen) and 292. Saltador (Argentinian Knight). I actually was getting something else ready for this weekend, and then realized that I'd already uploaded another version of it, so here are two pieces that go with the Faro and Loco from two weekends ago.

To refresh, the Argentinian sliders capture like the conventional pieces, but must jump over another piece in order to move without capture. The Faro (Rook) does this orthogonally and the Loco (Bishop) does it diagonally, so naturally the Señora (Queen) does both. (cQmpQ)

The Saltador (Knight) is a slightly different story. It moves like a normal Knight, particularly when capturing, but can only move without capturing if at least one of the two spaces it's jumping past has a piece in it. (cnNpafsmK)

The Saltador looks a little weird, but then again most of my "enhanced Knight" pieces look weird because the enhancements are meant for symmetrical pieces, which Knights are not.

In other news, I'm told that the problem I was having with Thingiverse's editor has been patched up as of last Tuesday. I haven't tested it out yet; I probably will do so over the weekend.

290. Threeleaper. This piece is one that I had assumed was purely a problemist's piece (or a piece used only as part of a compound, such as the Frog) until I learned that it apparently is used in a version of Tamerlane. Said version isn't on this site, so I don't know how well it works in practice, but given that it can only reach about 11% of the squares on a board (at most) it's probably not impressive.

Its move is simple: it leaps three squares orthogonally. (H)

Like I say, it can have some value; just not a lot. (Still, I was surprised when I found that I hadn't already posted it.)

Such a straightforward piece deserves a straightforward model. (And of course you can easily imagine what the Fourleaper and Fiveleaper would look like!)

I do have my issue at Thingiverse reported, and the staff moderator has been able to duplicate my problem; so while I'm waiting for the dev staff to fix it, I might as well post a bit of a something to keep the PotD slots filled.

284-289. The Orthodox Pieces (King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn). While they're not really fairy chess pieces on their own, they do appear in a majority of chess variants, and I do have models of them in a single set. I don't think I need to identify any of them or discuss their moves.

Now, however long the team at Thingiverse takes, at least I won't (necessarily) have to worry about it before Friday. :)

283. General. There have been many pieces called simply "General" over the years, not even considering those in Shogi and elsewhere that have adjectives and other modifiers in their names. This version, the one that I prefer to use, was created by Guiseppi Ciccolini in 1820 for his version of chess. It slides diagonally like a Bishop, or orthogonally an even number of spaces like a lame Dabbabarider. (BnDD)

István Paulovits also created his own General in 1820, which moves as Mann or Camel (KC); I'll address that one at a later date.

The model is based on a bit of 2D art that someone did for what a Gold or Silver General from Shogi would look like as a chess piece. Looking at it now, I think the center strut probably should be thickened (both for sturdiness and to better match the illustration).

282. Sandworm. This spawned from a recent comment on this list, like a throwaway line in a movie that becomes a classic.* This is inspired by the creatures from well-known desert planets in the Star Wars and Dune franchises (Tattooine and Arrakis, respectively), but it's not the full-sized version (which probably would be something to go into a four-square space, though with rather similar moves). This can be thought of as a "Juvenile Sandworm."

A main feature of the fictional sandworms is that they burrow underground, so as a piece the Sandworm simulates that by jumping others. At its basic, it slides in any radial direction, like a Queen. In the interest of game balance, I limit that to two pieces that it can burrow under, though in games with particularly large armies that may increase. If there are no pieces to burrow under and the Sandworm moves no more than 4 spaces to capture, it may continue to capture another piece in the next square. ((paf)2QcyafQ4)

In this (hopefully not overly confusing) diagram, the White Sandworm is able to capture any of the Black pices on the board. The only two that it can capture in a single move, however, are the Knight (i9) and Queen (j10), since the Knight is only 3 spaces away, the Queen is in the next adjacent space, and there are no intervening obstacles.

I probably could've posted this much earlier, but (aside from the previously-mentioned issues at Thingiverse) the shape kept coming out so that Thingiverse's sample-graphic (above) made it look like... well, something that probably shouldn't be shown on this site. It still kinda does, but I think it reads OK. (I might see about making the teeth large enough to be visible in the image.)

*It's even happened to my own comments, at the Super-Team Family: the Lost Issues blog. I was only kidding when I mentioned Snow White and the Seven Soldiers of Victory -- which became my first idea to be published there -- and my remark about Bugs Bunny vs. Doctor Doom was supposed to be an example of things we probably wouldn't see done!

An army with your pieces. What'd you call this army?

If it's a CwDA set, probably "Mad Movers."

By the way, Chinoise Rose in problemist language is called Rao.

I should've suspected that it would be something that rhymed with the others.

An army with your pieces. What'd you call this army? Greenwade Gravels?

By the way, Chinoise Rose in problemist language is called Rao.

I still have Astra (Rosetta) on your queue, but also I’ve recently created Astromech (even squares diagonally or odd ones orthogonally, AA[W?DD]). Try to guess who is Astromech)