Single Comment

Darn, dude, 1 for 3! The answers are No; Sure; and whatever you want to call it, feel free, I'm naming-deficient.

No, I don't want to mess with the knights yet for 2 reasons. One is the jumping aspect; the lame pieces for the Shooters are the king and pawns. The shooters all jump. [None of them are straight shooters.] And the knight is the odd shortrange shatranj piece that has survived until today. It doesn't feel right to take the 'quintessential' shatranj shortrange piece out of the shooters. Also, I do think it will make a big difference, swinging the game in favor of the FIDEs. Further, both Abdul-Rahman Sibahi and David Paulowich disagree with my strength assessment; Abdul-Rahman got me to use the Warelephant in place of the Jumping General, and David said he believed he could 'always' win as the FIDEs. The change I advocate[d] to weaken the shooters is to reduce the range of the queen analog from 3 to 2, allowing it only a 1 part move as opposed to the 2 part move of the Warelephant. 

I also intended the shooters pawns be shatranj pawns, with no initial double step. There's another balancing mechanism that doesn't require losing the knight's leap. If anything, to reduce the FIDEs, I might just make the FIDE knights lame, and make the game sliders vs leapers. I think that would be an interesting variant... 

But the key point is that all those answers given say 'I'. 'I don't want to' - so what? What do you want to do? Who owns those pieces? Certainly not me. I designed them, and copyrighted the piece descriptions and games they're in here and there, but I've always encouraged other people to help themselves to whatever they want. [All I'd like is acknowledgement ;-)] If you steal my idea and make your fortune, just donate generously to my local Widows and Orphans Fund. [Btw, I'm an orphan :-D] I encourage you to make any variant of this you want. We can playtest it along with your updated Hullabaloo. Heh, just add it to the thousand other games I've got going, mostly with you. Enjoy.