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Great Herd. Large variant with Camel, Zebra, Bison, Gnu and Gazelle pieces. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Apr 3, 2004 07:03 AM UTC:
You could be right, although it may be just a matter of approach and inter-piece collaboration. The Pawn structure problem certainly applies equally to Herd itself (on which this was intended as a modest improvement), and so will other problems to some extent. I could drop the versions with extra empty ranks altogether and give the ones with extra piece-filled rows more prominence, or even put a few other possibilities up the flagpole. As ever, further feedback is welcome. Perhaps elementals should be promotable to their compound with either other elemental, or in the basic variant the second rank should almost-duplicate the first in place of Pawns. Herdgi, with Shogi-style reintroduction, could amplify small advantages; this would certainly be suited to animal-shaped pieces distinguished by orientation instead of colour. Herdrider, with all oblique pieces replaced by their riders, would be a significant overall strengthening but a somewhat extreme step.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Apr 10, 2004 07:53 AM UTC:
I have located the existnng variant that uses the Buffalo: it is Gigachess
(http://www.chessvariants.com/large.dir/gigachess.html).

George Duke wrote on Mon, Dec 14, 2009 06:13 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
Charles, did you ever get the question answered where the Buffalo is? Great Herd Gilman text ends, ''cannot recall where Buffalo...'' Cazaux's Gigachess has it:
http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/gigachess.html

💡📝Charles Gilman wrote on Wed, Dec 16, 2009 07:39 AM UTC:
If you look at my previous comment on this variant you will notice that I gave the same answer myself. As Great Herd is not one of my best efforts I have not put much effort into getting it updated. In any case editors seem to have stopped posting updates to this kind of entry - see my recent comments on Bachelor Kamil and Honeycomb Chess.

George Duke wrote on Thu, Mar 17, 2011 03:36 PM UTC:
Thanks Charles, the Goldchess and Silverchess are just deferred to keep up with the days a while, not deferred all the way until 16 March 2012. When G&S gets duly reviewed (it is not yet even read), hopefully the accuracy of the connections you refer to will be uncovered. Your use of piece values are rare and will be noted, and possibly you can enlighten for instance whether your examples of openings are nil or not. It is more matter of style of presentation contrasting Gilman and Betza. The object of this side project is to bring 'Gilmans' to the masses. As Strong says there are not even a dozen G.C. presets of these things.  Not only that, the majority of the 250 cvs of Gilman since 2003 went uncommented before this project. One can assume also that most remained unread until this survey. And of course they virtually all remain unplayed as intended. Day 77 18.March.2011 generates CV#77, Great Herd. Great Herd is of interest for reuse of Bison and to lesser extent Gnu.  Charles, the  first use of Bison is year 1992 by the last section of this article ''Other Embodiments,''
http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/falconpatent.html. 
It describes the subvariant, ''Another possible embodiment is that in which the falcon has the ability to jump or leap over an intervening piece.'' That is Bison from 1992, though the formal date of the text publication became 1996.  Since its use is so old before CVPage existed, the description cannot be expected to follow contemporary format exactly. Now Great Herd builds constructively on year 2000 Herd by Sirotkin for another valuable Gilman cv.  The piece-types are all leapers like Herd's, and the combination cv Gilman is referring to is for the Bird board and Herd leapers, not Carrera compounds. Great Herd here goes: Knight-Zebra-Camel-Bison-Gnu-King-Gazelle-Camel-Zebra-Knight. Gnu as (N+Camel) has about 10 cv examples first edition of 'ECV'(1994).

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