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Thank you for the comment and rating, Andy. Since I haven't heard from Christine or Roberto recently, I guess I'll have to speak for all of us. Both Modern and HyperModern Shatranj were designed to fit on a 'direct line' between the games of historic shatranj and modern chess. Thus the elephants stay bishoplike and the 2-square sliding general stays linear for HMS, unlike your substitutes of waffle and panther. There's nothing wrong with that; I've used the piece you call the 'panther' in 4 recent games, generally under the name 'bent sliding general' with its own icon. [BTW, where did you get the name 'panther'? I didn't see it in the Piecelopedia...] You describe a different game, which is obviously playable. There are about 3 differences between the 2 games. The most obvious is in the greatly increased strength of the queen analog, all 24 squares within 2 of the panther vs 16 for the [linear] sliding general. The waffle is not colorbound and also hits 8 squares, so should be stronger and is in an endgame with very few pieces, for example. But [unlike the modern elephant], the waffle is a rather clumsy piece, and has only 3 forward squares to the elephant's 4, so is deficient in attack power. The panther more than makes up for it - different games. You could write it up and make a preset.