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HG ...

Your set looks great. The crests on the four finished  hoplites on the left make me smile. This crafting is something I am not cut out for or I might have made my own set. Nice work!

I have departed from the universal pieces approach to designing the Spartan pieces due to some practical experience I have had. There is a lot to be said for this approach and it's certainly what I am now using when playing face-to-face. I use pieces from a Capablanca set for the Spartans and thus use the Archbishop for the Warlord and either the Queen or Chancellor for the General depending on the preferences of who is playing.

We play most weeks on Saturday night at a Game store here in San Diego. The game is set up at the front counter so there are quite a few folks that walk by and look. These people assume its orthodox chess and with a few of the right pieces removed there would be no way to tell that we were playing something different. 

There is quite a bit of confusion and for many this confusion is a turn-off. When they have looked at the game for several minutes and asked a question like, for example, Why is the black King still in check? The first thing I must explain is that we are not playing orthodox chess. That takes some doing and often starts the whole conversation off on the wrong foot. It seems to me they feel betrayed or ignorant but I am not sure. What I do know is that the reaction is not positive.

So for the masses that would not know an Archbishop or a Chancellor if they saw them, one of my design goals is at-a-glance clarity and the clarity I am want is this: I want anyone who walks up and glances at the board to realize its not orthodox chess no matter how many pieces there are on the board. Hence I have departed from universality and there is a downside to this but it is, for me, a trade off. I suppose it's of a marketing decision of a sort rather than a chess decision.

So, are you planning on playing against someone with your new Spartan Chess set?