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Jeremy Good wrote on Thu, Jul 26, 2007 08:43 PM UTC:
Hi, Michael.

I'm very excited to know that you plan to do more work on Pocket Mutation Chess.

I love Pocket Mutation Chess very much and the 'Excellent' rating I gave it earlier still holds for me. I'm in no way disillusioned. I would really like to see an expanded piece set, rather than alternate piece sets. Joe Joyce believes (and he's obviously quite right) that many short range pieces can compete well against the longer range ones. As evidence, he proffers 'Shatranjian Shooters' CDA and even has a hard time paring down the short range pieces enough to be soft enough to compete against the FIDEs. In other words, short range pieces can compete very effectively against rider pieces. Those who favor short range pieces can enjoy playing against those who favor longer range ones.

I see that you're already committed to a project but I also have talked about wanting to work on a version of Pocket Mutation Chess variant, recently on the chessvariants yahoogroup. This was in response to an email written by Joe Joyce in which he says that Pocket Mutation Chess is his 'favorite chess variant.' Joe there describes it beautifully as a 'fantasy variant' of 'Chess with Changing Armies.'

I propose having more classes, including one or two below (!) pawn (e.g., spacious wazir and lame dabbabas -- of course to be able to put such pieces on the board, you would have to start with one or two very weak ones) and two or three above Amazonrider.

Also, I favor having more pieces in each class, at least five per class. For example: In class 1, there are at least a few more types of pawns you could have, the most obvious ones that come to mind are chinese pawns and berolina pawns.

Thinking it over, I would really like to see nightriders put into Class 4. Then, a nightrider could only come on the board after a Class 3 piece gets to the eighth rank. Being able to pocket your rooks and change them into nightriders immediately really forces your opposing player to protect their bishop five squares (c5, f5 for white, c4, f4 for black).

Likewise, I would shift Cardinalrider into Class 6 (othwerwise queen could immediately turn into cardinalrider), therefore Chancellorrider and Supercardinalrider into Class 7, etc.

There might even be some classes of pieces subtly different enough to fit in between some of the classes you have already.

Obviously this is a variant where the relative values of the pieces matters tremendously. And therein lies much of its appeal because the relative values of pieces is already of paramount importance to any true chess enthusiast.

Michael, email me, please, if you're interested in discussing these things with me more. (I hope you will.)


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