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Rich asks if there is a Track 1.5, between tracks 1 and 2. Well, that may
be somewhat debatable, but I'd like to walk down to the other end of the
platform, to Track 9&3/4. 

One of the 'fringe' areas in which I know of very little work being done
is that of 'giant' pieces. Koksal Karakus designed Giant Chess, which
uses a chesspiece [the Dev] that covers 4 squares on the board, in a 2x2
area. There is a wall piece that covers 2 adjacent squares. I'm sure
there are other such pieces, but here I'd like to consider a 'giant
chesspiece' that is composed of several common chess pieces. Unlike other
tries, this 'piece' has one unit that acts as the 'king' for the entire
multi-unit piece. Kill the 'king' and the 'piece' is dead, even if bits
of its corpse still remain [immobile] on the board. 

Call the king a brain unit, make a rule that no part [individual unit] of
the 'piece' can move without being in direct contact with the brain, use
3 or more different kinds of chesspieces as units, and you have a large
piece that can seem to move across the board almost like it was alive. 

Why bother? Well, it gives the concepts of chesspiece 'powers' and hit
points a whole new meaning. You want a piece that can attack at a
distance? Put bishops or rooks into it; they can 'fire' out of the piece
across the board to capture. They may well be 'one-shot' pieces if used
this way, but if you can pick off an enemy brain with one shot, and
without exposing your own brain units, it can be very worth it. As far as
'hit points', that's just the number of units in a piece. And power is
easily seen then as what kind of units are [remaining] in the multi-square
piece. 

To do this right needs big boards, which is why I suggested the 12x16
board. Because there are 2 levels of organization, there are 2 ways to
look at the number of chesspieces in the game. On the lower level, there
are 32 pieces per side. On the higher level, there are 4. Each of the 4 is
composed of about 8 units, is all. Enjoy.