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Hi, Sam. Was away when you started this, and just now have read this topic
from the beginning. I was going to offer 'Great Shatranj' as a Capa
variant, but I see from your footnote in the initial post that you're not
too keen on shortrange pieces:
'[1] We can take this idea all of the way, and make a variant of
Cherry's Capablanca Shantraj where the rook is wazir + dabbah, and the
bishop is ferz + alfil, and the queen is the combination of those two
pieces. However, Chess variants already have a hard enough time attracting
interest without us making the movement of all the non-royal pieces
different, making the game even harder to learn.'
But you still like augmented knights, so how about this: make the 2
additional pieces the knight-ferz and the knight-wazir, each capturing as
it moves, and each worth about a rook, and change the queen to an amazon?
This would give you a rather knight-oriented army, and one that is not
that powerful.
Question: what pieces do you include in as chesslike enough, and which are
out? Or am I misunderstanding the quote, and you really think woody rooks
and modern elephants are okay as pieces in a game, but only with more
standard chess[like] pieces? In other words, to cross topics a bit, if we
could get them, what are the pieces you'd get values for, and what are
the ones you wouldn't bother with?