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[Hey, David. Looking forward to seeing your designs at larger sizes.
Apparently we have some agreement on pieces.]
How do you get enough piece variety in a superlarge to make the game
worthwhile without overloading the player with reams of rules? One way is
to establish some basic piece types and modify each of them with a few
different movement rules. To make this work, you must have a good, clear,
simple, easily understandable symbology to go along with your good, clear,
simple, easily understandable and short [for playability] rules. So we
start by using David Howe's Alfaerie icons, something that is most likely
very familiar to anyone who plays variants and would be reading this, and
if not, the info is easily accessible. They are clear, simple, easily
distinguishable, and easily modifiable, all great virtues for any game
designer. Then we add a few simple symbols to the mix, that modify the
piece moves.
What sorts of pieces will we have? Let's look at '8 of Everything'
[which actually has 8 of each FIDE piece, but 24 pawns per side] for some
ideas. It's got 8 kings and 24 pawns, 32 pieces that move 1 square/turn.
It's got 8 knights, which move 2 squares/turn. It's got 24 bishops,
rooks, and queens, which as unlimited sliders, move up to 23 squares/turn.
That's it. Now, admittedly, the bishops, rooks, and queens can move any
number of squares up to their maximum, but there does seem to be a gaping
hole in movement ranges between 1, 2, and 23. We want some
intermediate-range pieces [well, I do, anyhow] to justify blowing the FIDE
board up to 9 times its proper size. And a decent piece mix; Bs, Rs and Qs
are all right in their place, but with all that space, we want a decent
amount of shorter-range pieces, including some cut-down FIDES and some
shortrange point and area covering pieces. 
Finally, we want a few kinds of leaders. Top dog is the king, but we will
also use other leader pieces. Every leader will be allowed to move 1 piece
under its command and within its [limited] command range every turn. This
should take care of little problems like how we work multi-move turns and
how to tame queens that can move 23 squares/turn.