I know it's not generally a good strategy to submit a game without playing
it first, but since I was in a hurry to get a submission in, I kind of
overlooked this fact :(

However, my friend (Andrew Kaczrowski) has volunteered to play a game of
Ladder Shogi with me soon. We'll see how it turns out.

By the way, if the absorbtion rule DOES turn out to be a problem, I can
always change the game to make it more WOtN-like, by saying value pieces
only go up one rank when capturing, and only go down ONE when being
captured (not all the way back down to a merchant).

By the way, the Cricket piece comes from Legend Chess II (see my earlier
post) where it was called a Paladin. The only thing that's been changed
here is its move (now like a King instead of a double Knight jump, as
before).

Charles: I understand all about your wanting to standardize piece names.
However, my own personal opinion on the subject is that this is impossible
to achieve in practice. A chess variant that contains non-orthodox pieces
will only be fully enjoyable if it has some kind of coherent theme (such
as a medieval battle, a modern or futuristic one, or a feud between two
groups of animals). If you use only the 'proper' names for each piece,
then you might end up combining a Dragon (N+P) with a Pancake (see the
Piececlopedia) in the same game. To some designers this would be okay, but
since most of the games I create are themed, I generally don't like to
have mythological creatures and food pieces in the same game. As a result,
at least some name changes would be in order here. This is why I probably
wouldn't give one of my pieces a name like Fortnight (too abstract) even
if that was the 'proper' name for the piece.