Double Courier Chess

Devlopment of this variant has ceased - but it has lead to M Courier Chess

This variant applies some of the ideas from S Courier Chess to ExCoCo Chess.

This is attempt number 2.

Pieces

The piece set is taken directly from S Courier with these minor name changes:

• Alibaba becomes Courier. This follows the practice adopted in Modern Courier Chess
• War Machine becomes Warrior. This is just personal preference. I just do not like War-Machine as a name for for a chess-piece.
• Jumping General becomes Squire.
• Squirrel becomes Legate. Again, personal taste, I just prefer not to use animal names for chess pieces unless there is a connection with warfare. An alternative name for this piece is Centurion, but the initial letter is already taken, hence the promotion to Legate.

and these additions:

• a Marquess - added for two reasons. Firstly in keeping with the Double motif, it gives 16 piece types other than the King against Courier's 8. Secondly it completes the "restricted" family of Viscount, Thane and Duke by adding a cognate for the Knight. The Marquess is a 2-step Moa-Mao rider.
• an increase in the numbers of some types to bring the total number of pieces per side to 48, again keeping to the Double theme.

Board and Set-Up

After some trial and error the initial array looks like this:

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