HG,
You have sort of abandoned this thread for a while, and to me it is a very interesting discussion. The min 3 steps idea seems very good to me.
I was contemplating something these days in relation to centennial chess. In that game you can move twice before the first capture. Maybe for such a large variant you could think about introducing the double non-capturring moves at any time. The games tend to become rather localized otherwise. Or in contrast to that you could use more leapers with long leaps like say a (4,1) leaper. Or you may replace the wizard (as you already have a camel) with (1,1)&(4,1). This will give more of an over the whole board sensation. On the other hand too many forks from such leapers could lead to a sentiment of randomness. And also easily jumping the pawn chains is rarely a good idea. What I'm proposing the is to have long path movers (like the falcon from falcon chess) with more (say 16 or 20) destinations!
HG, You have sort of abandoned this thread for a while, and to me it is a very interesting discussion. The min 3 steps idea seems very good to me. I was contemplating something these days in relation to centennial chess. In that game you can move twice before the first capture. Maybe for such a large variant you could think about introducing the double non-capturring moves at any time. The games tend to become rather localized otherwise. Or in contrast to that you could use more leapers with long leaps like say a (4,1) leaper. Or you may replace the wizard (as you already have a camel) with (1,1)&(4,1). This will give more of an over the whole board sensation. On the other hand too many forks from such leapers could lead to a sentiment of randomness. And also easily jumping the pawn chains is rarely a good idea. What I'm proposing the is to have long path movers (like the falcon from falcon chess) with more (say 16 or 20) destinations!