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H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 12 05:43 AM EDT:

Would this be a viable idea? A variant with (for each side) 8 minors, 4 rook-class pieces, 8 super-pieces, 2 royals and 2 virtually unstoppable missiles, filling the first two ranks behind a pawn rank. The super-pieces and royals would all be locked in on the back rank, unable to escape before the opponent's missiles wiped out two 3x3 areas, each containing 3 super-pieces, two minors, one rook-class piece, 2 minors and 3 pawns. Something like:

After the pre-emptive strike each player would be left with 2 super-pieces, 2 rook-class pieces, 4 minors, 2 royals and 6 Pawns. But the first few opening moves would determine which pieces these are. The idea is that variants with very many pieces either tend to either take a very long time to play, or most pieces would not be used at all. So we might as well make it clear from the beginning which pieces will not get used, by eliminating those in the early opening. Both players will have a say in exactly which pieces will get eliminated.

Each player has two royals; to win they must capture one and checkmate the other. This to make it not too easy to wipe out enemy royalty through missile strikes. A player could decide to blow up one of the royals instead of a super-piece, but then it must be possible to save the other. Perhaps it would need some powerful initial move for that, like flying to any empty square on the back rank.

The missiles have Grasshopper-like moves and start on 2nd rank. This enable them to jump out immediately over the Pawn-wall in various ways. But doing so narrows down their possible strike location, as once out they are not very mobile anymore. To compensate for that they have grasshopping Griffon and Manticore moves, to go around any blocker the opponent might try to throw into the orthogonal or diagonal missile trajectory.


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