user3481: How powerful is it for the Empowered Army to open by using knight-moves for their Empowered Rooks and/or Bishops?
In Chess 2: The Sequel, the knights, bishops, and rooks of the Empowered Army are considered empowered and can move as any adjacent empowered piece in addition to their own movement.  To a beginner such as myself, it seems particularly strong to open by taking advantage of this by developing the empowered pieces immediately.  All of the pieces can be developed through knight-moves in this way after a total of 6 moves.
1. Ra1 b3
2. Rh1 g3
3. Bc1 d3
4. Bf1 e3
5. Nb1 c3
6. Ng1 f3


How strong is the use of empowered movement as opening moves?  Should one focus on performing all 6 of these moves, or is it more sensible to do a subset of them?  Is their an ideal order to these moves?  Does the asymmetry of the King and Elegant Queen affect these things?

user3512: I believe the optimum opening would be what Cleveland is suggesting.  A combination of rook & knight with king & queen pawn @ d4 & e4, controlling the center.  In the opening suggested in the example above, although it controls the center of the board, it restricts any immediate pathway for the king.  In a game where one of the win conditions is crossing the middle of the board with your king, this may not be the best opening.

user3270: My intuition might be totally off because this is very different from real chess, but I don't see why you wouldn't still want to try to control the center with pawns as white. You can develop all your pieces quickly this way but black can make a couple pawn moves (say, e5 and d5 while you are bringing your rooks out) then develop his own minor pieces to defend them. I wouldn't go with this opening strategy.

user3486: Against Reaper in particular you might have problems with something like 1. ...Rhc3, blocking the knight from moving to c3 and making it arbitrarily hard to link up the Rook and Bishop.

3481: <p><strong>How powerful is it for the Empowered Army to open by using knight-moves for their Empowered Rooks and/or Bishops?</strong></p>

<p>In <strong><em>Chess 2: The Sequel</em></strong>, the knights, bishops, and rooks of the Empowered Army are considered <em>empowered</em> and can move as any adjacent empowered piece in addition to their own movement.  To a beginner such as myself, it seems particularly strong to open by taking advantage of this by developing the empowered pieces immediately.  All of the pieces can be developed through knight-moves in this way after a total of 6 moves.</p>

<pre><code>1. Ra1 b3
2. Rh1 g3
3. Bc1 d3
4. Bf1 e3
5. Nb1 c3
6. Ng1 f3
</code></pre>

<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/7kWJr.png" alt="Example"></p>

<p>How strong is the use of empowered movement as opening moves?  Should one focus on performing all 6 of these moves, or is it more sensible to do a subset of them?  Is their an ideal order to these moves?  Does the asymmetry of the King and Elegant Queen affect these things?</p>
 3512: <p>I believe the optimum opening would be what Cleveland is suggesting.  A combination of rook &amp; knight with king &amp; queen pawn @ d4 &amp; e4, controlling the center.  In the opening suggested in the example above, although it controls the center of the board, it restricts any immediate pathway for the king.  In a game where one of the win conditions is crossing the middle of the board with your king, this may not be the best opening.</p>
 3270: <p>My intuition might be totally off because this is very different from real chess, but I don't see why you wouldn't still want to try to control the center with pawns as white. You can develop all your pieces quickly this way but black can make a couple pawn moves (say, e5 and d5 while you are bringing your rooks out) then develop his own minor pieces to defend them. I wouldn't go with this opening strategy.</p>
 3486: <p>Against Reaper in particular you might have problems with something like 1. ...Rhc3, blocking the knight from moving to c3 and making it arbitrarily hard to link up the Rook and Bishop.</p>
