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Bn Em wrote on Mon, Aug 14, 2023 10:36 PM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from Fri Aug 11 04:06 PM:

I haven't read this in detail, and I'll admit I find long(‐ish) lists of pieces in alphabetical order difficult to make sense of (I've long held alphabetical order is horrible for everything other than dictionaries and list numbering) so I'll definitely have missed some things. A couple of cursory reactions though:

The double promotion thing is rare but neat, and having different pieces promote in different ways (even if to the limited extent it is here) likewise. I wonder a little bit about the memorability of some of the promotions, but then part of that will be lack of familiarity with the pieces themselves, and anyways the large Shōgis have it several times worse

Is the Bodyguard's Hia power even possible in the Interactive Diagrams?

Unless H.G. adds it as a Spell (I don't think he has already?) I expect not without effectively doing the same yourself

I admittedly am only about 98% sure I got his intention right on how [the Satrap] moves

I think I'm with the 2%; Gilman gives the Satrap as Steward+Steamer, the latter of which is mDcA (giving his “Wazbaba[…] capturing as a Fearful”), rather than what you seem to have taken to be mFcD which is the Stevedore. What you describe (fmWcD) is a nonroyal version of the Echidna (from Outback Chess), or Pawned Prince (using M&B terms), which lacks an atomic name.

Ofc it's up to you whether you want to keep the name and switch the piece, or keep (assuming you don't deem it too out of place — fwiw it seems fine to me) the piece and (presumably, to avoid confusion — even if with a nigh‐impenetrable source) adjust the name

Will move diagrams be needed, or are the text descriptions enough?

With the large number of unfamiliar pieces, it's probably worth at least putting each piece's image next to its name in the Pieces section; probably the moves themselves are mostly simple enough to get away w/o full diagrammes, especially since the long limited‐range moves would leave some of them arguably a bit unwieldy.

I would tend to suggest, though (as alluded to above), to order the pieces in some way more meaningful than alphabetical order; just grouping counterparts together would do a lot to give the piece list more structure and make it easier to follow imo


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