Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

The Salamander has conflicting documentation: in the table, it is
restricted to three spaces; however, its extended documentation and image
show it moving up to four.

Adrian King tried to cure all the ills of chess in one ambitious variant. While this attempt was doomed to fail, it is worth studying carefully. He presents many different pieces and promotion rules. This comment will be continued on the 'Zillions of Games file for: Scirocco' page.

'Adrian King tried to cure all the ills of chess in one ambitious
variant.
While this attempt was doomed to fail, it is worth studying carefully.'

I cannot understand such extreme pessimism.

Why do you automatically believe all possible solutions to a problem are
'doomed to fail'?

Let me offer some parallels here. According to Gödel's Incompleteness
Theorem, any sufficiently comprehensive system of logic will be
incomplete. The ideal logical system would be both comprehensive and
complete, but Gödel has shown that this can't be. According to Arrow's
Impossibility Theorem, 'There is no consistent method by which a
democratic society can make a choice (when voting) that is always fair
when that choice must be made from among 3 or more alternatives.' As
Steve Eppley puts it, it shows 'that no voting method can, in every
voting scenario, satisfy a certain set of desirable criteria:
non-dictatorship, unanimity, rationality, and 
independence from irrelevant alternatives (IIA).  Thus no voting method is
ideal.' The basic idea behind both of these is that some of the ideal
characteristics of a system, whether a logical system or a ballot counting
system, are incompatible with each other. It may also hold for Chess
variants that all the ideal characteristics of a Chess variant cannot
compatibly coexist in the same game. If that is so, then the ideal Chess
variant is a pipedream.

SILLY QUESTION: Does anyone care who has a forced win in the endgame with WHITE K(d4) and R(e5), BLACK K(g7) and R(f6)? Promotion of a King to Emperor might give a winning advantage here, but this will not happen until your opponent stops blocking the advance of your King with his Rook. So the game could drag on for more than 1000 moves, with the no-repetition rule deciding victory.

INTERESTING QUESTION: Is there a simple way to force a win with Emperor and Bishop against Emperor and Knight? It would seem that the Bishop's greater range (plus its ability to triangulate) could lead to a no-repetition rule victory.

Yes, 'there are plenty of good reasons for making chess variants besides trying to create the perfect one'. However, 'trying to create the perfect one' is the truly outstanding and inspiring reason. As to whether or not it is actually achievable, I maintain that creating a virtually perfect game is. Moreover, I can tentatively offer only ONE game I have ever created as a living proof ... to be lacerated at will by any or all naysayers who hang out here. It is named 'Hex Chess (square-spaced)'. Please check it out!

I prefer to venture that a more appropriate or correctly applicable parallel or analogy is a limit (in the sense of calculus) whereby perfection is not absolutely achievable but progressively approachable thru the correct solution of as many successive, problem terms or steps as possible. By no means do I regard this parallel or analogy as a perfect fit to our endeavor, though:

1. I strongly doubt that the number of game-design principles which must be adhered to in order to create the best chess variant possible is infinite (and thus, unachievable). I am aware of only appr. 25 essential and appr. 25 non-essential game-design principles which I consider important enough to comply with in every case. After six years of thought and work, I have become convinced that I have not overlooked or failed to consider any critically important topics within our craft.

2. The importance of the various problem terms or factors in game design varies greatly. One is most important (symmetry), several are vital, dozens are of minor-to-trivial benefit ... to comply with. Consequently, I have reasons to think that a board game exhibiting 75%-90% perfection (as if anyone has devised a proven, reliable mathematical method to measure such value-judgment laden qualities) can readily be implemented by anyone with sufficient expertise to follow several well-defined guidelines.

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'It may also hold for chess variants that all the ideal characteristics of a chess variant cannot compatibly coexist in the same game. If that is so, then the ideal chess variant is a pipedream.'

Your logic is impeccable but your premise, although very interesting, is dubious as it is drawn via precarious, interdisciplinary leaps from abstract findings in political philosophy and mathematical logic which may not be pertinent or unconditionally applicable to our specialized area. By the way, I address the issue of the apparent-yet-surpassable, incompatibility of ideal characteristics in chess variants within (and to some extent, throughout) my main descriptive essay and demonstrate the feasibility of these ideas via the implementation of one game.

This Frog is quad-compound WFTH, that is Wazir Ferz Tripper(3,3) Trebuchet(0,3).  Emperor is WDA.

Lioness is quint-compound WFDNA, that Betza already hypothesized in the nineties, all the squares inside 5x5 from a central starting square.