Comments by TH6

The game plays very well. The Minister and High Priestess both provide very interesting forks.

I thought the Bishops were placed oddly, though I know they were set to mimic Capablanca Chess. For such a large board, neither mine nor my opponent's were in play much (or at all). Potentially switching the Bishops and the High Priestess/Minister in the opening setup might fix this, as well as protect every pawn in the opening array and prevent white from procuring too strong of a center.

I favorited this game. Very inspiring short range piece combos and combat.

This was a rather fun variant. In theory, the inventor does well in keeping both Kings in play, but it wasn't experienced in our game.

The overextended knight move put a lot of pressure on the middle, to the point where my opponent had 4 pieces guarding his e4 pawn and I had 4 attacking it, with very little effort. One small blunder can really open up the game, so careful play is required.

This game has a lot of great potential. I think the inventor had almost hit gold with the addition of the Mamra. In my opinion, the Mamra is just a little too powerful. Never have I, in good practice, opened up a game with 1. h3 or 1. h4. The fact that both myself and my opponent had opened up with pawn movements on the h file in order to free our Mamras is testament to the Mamra's power.

Play is balanced between advancing your Mamra towards the enemy King, maintaining your pawn line, and sac'ing every major piece you have in order to open up the enemy pawn line.

I think even a small change such as the prohibiting the Mamra to capture pawns would dynamically change the game for a much better play. Otherwise, White seems to have a huge advantage with such a powerful piece on the move.

First, I wanted to say that my opponent handily outclassed me in our game.  I felt like every move of mine was a blunder. 

Aside from that heavy loss, I found the game very enjoyable.  I was definitely out of my element in this type of game, but the types of pieces really complimented each other and I see why this game gets a lot of correspondence and OTB traction.

I requested a game of this because I was very intrigued by the mix of pieces, though I think the game was shorted by it's need for rule clarifications.

A few things that I found only through research:
- The movement of the Nahbi.  The diagonal movements of the Nahbi do not change direction.  Thus, a Nahbi moves two spaces diagonally in the same direction, then one square in any orthogonal direction, in that order.
- Castling.  The correlation to FIDE chess is that it moves 2 squares left or right, not that the king ends in the same board position as in FIDE.  This was verified by downloading an external program (Zillions of Games) and loading the rules the inventor programmed.  

Once I found out how the Nahbi moved, I quite enjoyed the piece.  The non capturing move increases the mobility, while limiting it to being a sliding piece (instead of jumping) ensured that it wasn't too powerful.  I'd love to see it in other variants.

The Archer is a very good defensive unit and I feel is quite enough of a force to protect the king.  The Alfil, however, was useless.  In a 36 move game, neither players moved their Alfils and only one played a role in piece protection.  Limiting them to one side of the equator gives it 7 squares to protect, making them MUCH weaker than a pawn that has already crossed the equator.  Had the game continued, I would have been happy to exchange both of mine for a crossed pawn each.  If the piece is necessary to the game, I'd recommend removing the limit of remaining on one side of the equator only.

I did like the limit on the queen crossing the equator.  Seemed very fitting to make it a "short range" piece.

I really like the mix of pieces added to the game.  The setup positioning of the Lions brings them right into the game early and the Unicorn is a very instrumental piece to the game.  It is very challenging to use and to guard against.

Neither my opponent nor myself made any moves with the Queen nor the Chancellor, which seem like very important pieces to use.  I am not sure if that is a regular occurance or not.  

The board is large, but not too large - big enough to encourage use of the Unicorn.

Wow, this game is quite a gem.  The piece combinations are perfect - some long range, some short range, but nothing too over powered.  It tends to be a slower paced game (our game was 70+ moves), but it adds a lot of depth.  

Two different types of pawns and 3 promotion potentials, with a possibility of getting a second king.  The kings, are also valuable pieces in the fight.  Possibly the strongest piece in the game if you can keep them out of check.  Recruiting is a very unique style of play, providing strategy that I haven't seen before.  In my opinion, by far better than the pocketing method of Shogi.

Another aspect that I found great was due to the smaller number of pawns, your "line" was maintained by your minor pieces.  Every move and every capture was meaningful in this way.  It felt like an actual battle instead of a game.  Very much so one of the best games I've ever played.

I definitely favorited this one.