Laramonet wrote on 10/17/18 at 20:55:36:

Matthias Wahls advocated this idea for Black in his book 'Modernes Skandinavisch' in the 1990s, but this applied exclusively to the 3...Qa5 Scandinavian. I don't remember precisely the reasoning behind it, but I think the main point was that Black had more important things to do than developing the King's Knight, one of which was to play c6 early to allow the Queen to retreat to safety from its exposed position on a5. This is obviously not a consideration after 3...Qd8, so it's unclear what Black achieves by delaying ...Nf6 in the line under discussion. Is it possible your teammate is confusing the two variations? Even after 3...Qa5, in fact, Wahls himself subsequently wrote that there was a particular sequence of moves for White that posed a serious challenge to his 'Königsspringerzurückhaltungspolitik' ('policy of holding back the King's Knight'), as he called it, and he now recommended playing ...Nf6 before ...c6 in the main line.

I don't think that's the idea at all...like 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd8 4.d4 c6 5.Nf3 Bf5, for instance? Just like in all the other Scandi lines, 6.Ne5! looks pretty annoying there, since 6...Nd7? 7.Nxf7! is gross, and 6...e6 7.g4! or 6...Nf6 7.Bc4 e6 8.g4!  are similar and also strong.

kylemeister wrote on 02/15/17 at 21:20:25:


After 8.Qe2 we have


1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd8 4. Bc4 Nf6 5. Nf3 e6 6. d4 Be7 7. O-O O-O 8.
Qe2 a6 9. a4 b6 10. Bg5 Nc6!? (10... Bb7 11. Rad1 Nbd7 12. Rfe1 h6) 11. Bxf6 (
11. Rfd1 Nd5) 11... Bxf6 12. Rad1 Bb7 13. Ne4 Nb4 14. Ne5 Nd5 

Still seems pretty "solid" as per the Op's question.

How about something like

1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd8 4. Bc4 Nf6 5. Nf3 e6 6. d4 Be7 7. O-O O-O 8.
Re1 c5 9. d5 b5 and if 10. Bxb5 exd5 with equality 

Keano wrote on 12/29/16 at 12:40:28:

Bring it on!

I guess Nc6 and Bg4 arguing that Black's a6 is more useful than White's a4.

Maybe 5...a6 is possible now, intending b5 and Bb7.

If your idea is to get the Caro Kann structure and exchanging the bishop most of the time for a knight to get a solid and with not much theory but with a small advantage for White, there is the Fort Knox variation of the French.

IM Andrew Martin published a new 60-minutes-DVD about "The solid Scandinavian", suggesting 1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 Qd8 4 d4 Nf6 5 Nf3 Bg4, exchanging bishop against knight.

If White plays 1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 Qd8 4 Nf3...

4... Bg4? 5 Ne5 and Black is in all sorts of trouble.

If 4...Bg4 isn't possible, how develop the light squared bishop? If 4...Bf5 the bishop will be a target for a white pawn attack. 

What can Black do? Play in Caro-Kann-style with 4...c6? In my opinion this is a very passive Caro-Kann. The real name of Martin's DVD should be: "The passive Scandinavian".