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Lion Chess[Subject Thread] [Add Response]

H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, May 22, 2013 04:17 PM UTC:

Well, the fact that the Lion can move on after it captures is all the fun.
Otherwise it would be a pretty dull piece. I'd rather drop the jumps than
hit-and-run captures. But I don't expect that to have much effect on the
value, so it would not be worth it.

It is true that replacing a Rook in stead of a Knight would weaken the army
by 2 Pawns. As you say it causes some castling trouble. But what might be
worse is that it makes it more difficult to trade a Lion for other
material, as the only reasonable path for that would be L vs Q+R, and
halving the number of Rooks halves the number of opportunities you will get
to do that. OTOH, removing a Knight leaves plenty of possibilities to trade
Rooks for weaker material (e.g. R vs 2 minors), as there are still 3 minors
left.

So I expect the game to work better it the Lion replaces the Knight rather
than the Rook.