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Hi, Gary. Okay, you said: 'I am inclined to agree with the opinion
that larger boards can more easily accomodate pieces with greater
mobility... and that multi-move turns are more at home on such boards...
as are larger numbers of different piece types.' Me, too. I just felt
that two things were being fluffed over. One is how big 'big' is; and
the other has to do with designing increasing numbers of pieces and powers
as you increase board size. I personally feel 8x8 is small; but I don't
agree that larger boards mean more pieces. I think an often more elegant
solution is to use a few pieces on a large board. This allows the workings
of the pieces and the board to stand out more clearly. This is, of course,
personal preference only. 
Where I differ from you is in 2 other statements: 'But still, I would not
consider the GO stones as chess pieces any more than I would consider the
'X' and 'O' of tic-tac-toe to be pieces' and 'The fact that GO
pieces work well on a 19 x 19 board has no signifigance to chess pieces.'
Those two statements go right to the foundation of my design philosophy.
When I first decided to design games seriously, I thought about what any
game was, how to look at it, and where I could stake out a unique
position. I look at a game as (almost always) having 3 components, pieces,
rules and board. Go stones, X's and O's, chessmen, they're all the same
in this view, the game pieces. The difference is in the rules: the 1st two
games' play involves placing the pieces on the board in an advantageous
way; chess already has the pieces on the board, play involves moving the
pieces advantageously. 
The above is a gross simplification, but this post is already long. I'll
finish by suggesting that Go pieces are only a shift from wazirs and
ferzes. In conceptual space, Go is fairly close to one 'side' of chess,
and  'Little Wars' or Axis and Allies are roughly on the other side of
chess, fairly close, along the complexity line. Tic-tac-toe is on the
other side of Go from chess and the other games along that complexity
line. Enjoy. Joe