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I see Mats Winther has recently created a new piece that

• Has a simple move
• Has not been, to the extent of my knowledge, thought of before

I’ll give you guys Mats’ description of this new “Warlock” piece:

This magic piece can change movement capability by using up a move to transform itself. A Warlock rook can change into a Warlock cannon by turning the rook upside down, or vice versa. The Warlock cannon uses Korean Cannon movement: it moves as a rook after having jumped a piece. If it cannot jump then it cannot move. As such, it is somewhat weaker than a knight, but its tactical capacity is great. In any case, the Warlock cannon can always transform itself back into a Warlock rook. After the piece is transformed it must make a move before making yet another transformation. So it's not possible to stay put and make continual transformations on the same square.

OK, this is something I haven’t really seen before: A piece that can, at the cost of a tempo, change its nature. We can have all kinds of pieces of this form: bishops that can become knights and vice versa, Jumping Marshalls (Korea Cannon Rook + Knight) that can become Queens, as just two examples. This is best for pieces that are strong, but don’t develop very well in the opening, or pieces that alternate between two pieces of about the same value (bishops becoming knights on an 8x8 board, or bishops becoming augmented knights on larger boards).

The only time I’ve seen something like this before is Betza’s “Weakest chess”, where a piece has to lost a tempo to go from a moving piece to a capturing piece (and vice versa). Here’s an idea for people who want a game that computers do not play well: Multi-move weakest chess!