Hi, Andy. I, too, am skeptical that this game has ever been played; I
seriously doubt it. That's why I didn't rate it in my first comment. Had
I, I would have given it a 'good', because until it's played, a game
cannot really be judged, and to me it looks like it would range from
average to excellent. On play balance: I think Charles is paying great
attention - he doesn't overcrowd the board with pieces like so many big
games. That alone indicates a lot [or that, like me, he couldn't come up
with any more pieces... :-) ] You say: 'Too many piece types and too many
short range mean steep learning curve and long slow game with no sharp
tactics.'  I also agree there are a lot of piece-types, certainly more
than I would normally tend to use. But many of the pieces are forward-only
versions of the standard pieces. Even his odd pawn is a forward-only ferz.
I don't see much learning curve here. Also, I am familiar with shortrange
pieces, and I have to say I think you completely mischaracterize them when
you say they give a 'long slow game with no sharp tactics.' To
demonstrate my position, I would like to offer to play a number of my own
games, all shortrange. Specifically, we could play 2 games each of Great
Shatranj, Grand Shatranj, Lemurian Shatranj, Atlantean Barroom Shatranj,
and Chieftain Chess. In Great Shatranj [8x10], no piece moves more than 2;
in Lemurian [8x8] and Chieftain [12x16], no piece moves more than 3; in
Grand [10x10] and Atlantean [10x10], none more than 4. 
Okay, I'm not completely serious and I'm not really trying to put you on
the spot, I'm just trying to win a point in this discussion. But I do want
to make 2 serious points: that Charles does have a good sense of design, he
just needs to make his games available to be played to refine his designs
and prove it; and that shortrange pieces can easily be as good as
longrange ones. Heck, a CWDA game on a 10x10 with Grand Chess vs Atlantean
Barroom pieces would be a slaughter! ;-)
Enjoy.  Joe
ps: if you wanted to, we could play the games anyway...