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Hi, Graeme. Thanks for taking me up on the invite. I believe the game will
move along fairly quickly - one thing I did was increase the tempo of the
game a little - 100 pieces/8 leaders means that 1 in every 12.5 pieces in
'Fort' can move each turn. With FIDE, it's 1 in 16 at start. Even
though I moved only 7 pieces, that's still better than 1 in 14 on the
first move. 
I next plan to do a 20x30, with a more traditional battle line setup. But
I need to see how Fort plays, first. I've thought of a central 'fort',
and even a small 'city' in the middle of the board surrounded by a
besieging army. I suspect that if this game works, we could recast any
number of military conflicts as chess variants. 
The traditional games of non-traditional capture are Ultima[Baroque],
Optima, Maxima, Rococo, Fugue... but you are looking at doing a more
military game. I recently tried that myself in the utterly ignored
SpaceWar, my 12x16 space opera entry into the field. I'd love to discuss
ideas with you on that. We might get a game people would actually play!
[Even if it's just us. lol]
Like your ideas about the possibilities. Got some truly strange ideas
about what can be done with an actual 'large variant'. Yes, David, 12x12
*is* small [and I'm doing my darnedest to prove it]. ;-)