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Does anyone know if 2 fibnifs can force mate against a lone K, say on 10x8 or 12x8 rectangular boards?

While I'm at it, a bigger challenge might be the off-topic question: Can 2 compound pieces force mate vs. a lone K on 12x8, if they are both a lame knight (that is, a Chinese Chess horse) plus wazir movement compound piece?

Note that as part of an attempt to get rid of the ridiculous names of some of the CwDA pieces it was decided the Fibnif should be renamed to Lancer.

And yes, a pair of Lancers is pretty good at checkmating. An overview for various board sizes:

Given that Knight + Wazir is already won, and that blocking plays virtually no role at all in the late end-game (especially when the losing side cannot block because the squares where this could be done are attacked by the piece itself), two WazirKnights should have no problem at all. My EGT generator does not do lame leaps, but with a pair of NW the stats are:

Note that the winning percentage for N + W is not as high as commonly found in general wins. This is because a Wazir can easily be chased to doom by a King, when it happens to wake up cut off from the rest of its army. So there are a lot more positions where the strong side loses a piece despite the fact that he has the move (which otherwise are usually limited to forks in configurations where one of the pieces cannot move away while protecting the other, or attacked pieces trapped against an edge or in a corner).

Thanks for the info, H.G.!

When I added the checkmating paragraph I also added the mention that this piece nowadays is also known as Lancer.

Perhaps someone who knows how to do this can add a link to the page in the Piececlopedia index under that name.

@HG: I would like to know where this piece has been called Lancer. All Lancers I can find are different pieces, like mRcN or rotating piece.

@HG: I would like to know where this piece has been called Lancer. All Lancers I can find are different pieces, like mRcN or rotating piece.

Same here, except that I most often see a Lancer as a (2,4) leaper (aka Hare or Stag).

Once, when writing code for CwDA, Greg Strong has asked the community for an alternative named to fibnif, as he did not like it. I have proposed lancer and donkey while favoriting lancer. He has chosen lancer for chessV2!

And by the way, has anyone news on Greg?

I emailed Greg late last year and his reply was short, like:

29 Dec 2023:

Happy holidays! I'm doing pretty well. How are you?

Yea, I haven't been on the CVP for a long time. I will probably return at some point but have been involved with other things...

Here's a preliminary version of a settings file of mine for one of my CV invention ideas in the works, which uses Fibnifs (aka Lancers) - the name of the CV was changed to something Fergus suggested to me, as the word Lancer(s) by itself has been used in the case of a few CVs published on CVP to date:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Fibnif+Lancers+Chess&settings=default

As Aurelian explained, this was Greg's initiative. He wanted to get rid of all these silly names obtained from trying to pronounce the Betza move notation. So in ChessV Bede became Cleric, Half Duck became Lion, and he asked if anyone had an idea for Fibnif. Aurelian came up with Lancer, and we liked it, because the Fibnif is a narrow piece, and in battle Lancers cannot easily turn sideways, because of their long lance.

I can't find chessV2. Where it is?

Here is the latest installer version: http://www.chessv.org/. But there are some much newer versions. I'll search tomorrow!

@Aurelian: oh thank you. I thought that Chess V2 was a chess variant where I could find the Lancer as a Fibnif.

You are welcome!

I do not like the renaming of the piece to "Lancer" because that name is already taken: Problemists have named the (2,4)-leaper lancer. The name is also dangerously close to the piece named Lance in standard Shogi.