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I don't want to get in to an extended discussion about whether a first move mating threat really makes a given variant worse. I feel it often times does, and, should I point out, Capa seems to have agreed since he changed the initial array of Capa chess from RNBAQKMBNR (1st move mating threat) to RNABQKBMNR (no 1st move mating threat). Speaking of first move mating threats, it seems the Sage (Camel + Bishop) is a little too powerful for an 8x10 board. All 12 sage 8x10 opening setups that I proposed suffer from white being able to threaten mate as his first move. It's a little more difficult to come up with an opening setup where both sides have a pair of sages, but white can not threaten mate on the first move. Here is one such setup:

SRNSQKBNRB

However, I think Sage chess works better on a 10x10 board. One possible 10x10 opening setup is:

PPPPPPPPPP
.RNBQKBNR.
S........S

Where '.' is an empty square, and 'S' is Camel (colorbound 1,3 leaper) + Bishop.

And yes, Sage chess also works very nicely if we replace the queen by the Marshall (Rook + Knight).

Again, these are just proposed ideas. I'm not formalizing a variant yet. I'm waiting to see if Greg can add the Sage to ChessV. I also need to study the opening in Schoolbook more. :)