Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Where i got the panther name was the exotic pieces applet. I like the
waffle beacause
it is not colorbound so the game flows quicklier. This game might actually
be on par with chess it is just a little to weak so maybe if there was an
added weak piece it could battle chess. But anyway shatranj variants are
really interesting to me

John, thank you for the comment. Actually, the jumping general makes it into Grand Shatranj, but not this game. However, there is no reason you could not replace the sliding general with the jumping general in this game. The two reasons that did not happen are: first, that this game was sort of independently and sort of communally designed by 3 people, all of whom came to the same piece*; and second, in considering the game as I wrote up the game page, I felt the jumping aspect made the piece far too overpowered for a shatranj game that was otherwise so close to the original in pieces and concept. Still, all my presets are non-rules-checking, so one can swap pieces easily.

*I suspect the reason we all used this piece was that we were looking at moving shatranj toward chess in a series of 'shortest steps' from one to the other, and neither the modern queen nor the ancient ferz jump.

Stepping one square diagonally is not generally considered a jump. While the step to a diagonal square is longer than the step to an orthogonal square and the 2 squares moved between share no edge, nothing more than a single point of zero dimension, the ferz move is still considered a step rather than a jump. [And if I'm wrong, I know there are people who'd love to correct the error.]

Still, there is certainly nothing wrong with the idea, and I am never going to discourage people from experimenting with shortrange pieces. But my sense of style demands that piece be as it is for this game, which [was] fit[ted] into a specific sequence even before it became a stand-alone game. Finally, even if I completely agreed with you, I am still only one of [at least] three people who designed the game. Christine and Roberto together outvote me. ;-)

I agree about the confusion regarding the pawns. Probably a copy and paste of rules from the Modern Shatranj page, as not even the pieces in the diagram match the ones in the game in the tournament.

But in the first paragraph it does say that the game uses modern pawn rules (= 2 squares initial move + en passant).

Regarding the Elephant, I wouldn't call it a 'Bishop' like piece that can jump. It's actually an Alfil (that jumps) that can also play like a Ferz.

Sam, Jose, thank you for your comments. 

I agree the rules for pawn movement could be a little more organized. Would anyone object if I fixed that part? The double step and en passant are listed as 2 of the 6 rules given in the write-up, but it would be clearer if that information was included in the pawn movement paragraph.

The original preset does use an alfil-ferz icon for the elephant, and for the queen analog has a specific, made for that purpose icon, a 'double-guard', unshaded. However, that preset does not rules-check, something I cannot do. Apparently when the rules-checking preset was made for the tournament, it was based on the Modern Shatranj preset, not the HyperModern. I agree it is somewhat confusing, especially if one plays Modern Shatranj at the same time, with the same opponent, as Vitya and I are doing. But we can live with it for the tournament.

Sam, the question of what the queen analog [and other pieces] 'should be' is what took me through my entire shatranj series and right into things like Chieftain Chess and chesimals, which are still shatranj variants, although of a somewhat different character. The series uses the pieces you've suggested, and several more, in various games, and encourages experimentation. I believe the reason this game was picked for the tournament was that it is the closest of my designs to standard FIDE chess, and was included as an example of 'weak chess'.