Adrian King wrote on Thu, Jan 1, 2009 06:50 PM UTC:
I am registered, at last, and my revision to Scirocco has been posted.
On most days, I think I'd say a 2D chesslike game without drops feels cramped on a board smaller than 10 x 10. In part that is because I like short-ranged pieces, but a game with just short-ranged pieces is drawish when there are too few of them. 10 x 10 is about the size where you can put enough short-ranged pieces on the board to reduce the number of draws to decent levels.
As for 'normally ranged' pieces (which I assume means pieces that can cross the board in a single move), I think they work fine on a board of any size, but games where such pieces are in the minority and shorter-ranged pieces in the majority feel more natural. This is more true on larger boards, where it can become difficult visually to follow a long movement path (I've never played Taikyoku Shogi, and probably never will, but I'm pretty sure I'd get confused about which piece a Bishop attacks when it's halfway across the board, especially since the board squares are all the same color).