Single Comment

Thanks for your comments, it always helps to know what people who play my
games think.

The King has only 2 knight moves. This means that it has a potential of 10
squares it can reach (assuming it hadn't used any square move and is
located in the middle of an empty board). Once it executed both his knight
moves, he has only the usual 8 squares.

The Vampire can only move by leaping over exactly one piece (enemy or
friendly). It is the diagonal equivalent of the Cannon's capturing move,
only that the Vampire cannot capture by displacement, meaning it cannot
land on an occupied square.  It can capture a piece located in an
orthogonally adjacent square. Note that the Vampire doesn't need to move
in order to capture (it immediately threatens the four adjacent squares),
and it can also capture after making a move, but not vice versa (i.e. it
can move, capture, or move and capture, but not capture and move). The
Vampire is colour-bound to black, and while very threatening, it becomes
'crippled' quite easily by either blocking its way with 2 pieces, or
removing the piece from its way.
For other examples of the Vampire, or it's brother piece, feel free to
try any of my other variants.

When I design a game, I usually try not to create a very steep learning
curve, although you can say that none of my variants is 'newbie
friendly' and assume a certain degree of familiarity with Chess and Chess
Variants. I believe that for that type of player, this variant does not
have a high learning curve. It may not be a 'pick up and play' kind of
variant, but, to be honest, so are 90% of the variants in this site,
including Shataranj, not to mention the far eastern variants which have
quite a steep curve (especially Shogi). 

I personally really like small range pieces, and I find that utilizing
them on a large board makes for an interesting opening stages where the
players can strategically form their battle ranks begin the actual
skirmish. It's something I've always tried to implement with my
variants, you can see it in Med Chess, Infantry Chess, and Orthogonal
Chess44.

I believe more in 'pieces balance' rather than 'complementing'.
Meaning there should be an overall balance between the pieces, giving
every piece strengths and weaknesses, which in the overall doesn't allow
a certain piece to overwhelm the game. For instance, Chess' pieces are
complementing, but hardly balanced, while Shataranj's are balanced, but
not very complementing. I'm sorry to say that I did miss a spot here
regarding this issue, with the Vampire, which should've been an Assassin,
this will be fixed in the post tournament version of the game.

I think that once you try playing the game for several rounds, you might
change your initial opinion, or you'll have more criticism, either way,
It'll be my gain :). Thanks again for your info!