Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

As for Shogi, it uses a 9x9 board and flat, but angled pieces. And light tiles white with black images for both players (some have red for the promotion side)

3D pieces? On our graphic systems on the PC pieces are 2D... so certainly 2d can be used for western games. For 3D game sets, tiles are best for Shogi. Also for Shogi, there are 4 fairly popular piece sets (1) Japanese characters, (2) Japanese & Chinese characters both (3) vector images (4) western style images.

Xianqi (Chinese chess) - circular pieces are desired by tradition. And, they play on line intersections instead of on the squares themselves. Purchased sets often have Chinese on one side and western images on the other. Many PC versions have an option to select Chinese or Graphic pieces.

Closing note... I sort of like the variety of pieces I see here at CV. If one wants to make something like a Universal set, then the Alfarie piece sets are likely a very good place to start(sp)

Hey, Gary, thanks for your response. What if I made flat round disks that
had the same [western style] piece icon on each side, but in opposite
colors. This would allow us to play drop games by turning the pieces over
when captured. You would need at least 10 pawn disks for each side, giving
20 double-sided pawn disks. You would need more piece disks than that,
however. You would need the 8 FIDE pieces per side, plus the RN and BN
pieces, plus 2 cannons, plus a pair of guards, plus a pair of elephants
for shatranj, plus 2 towers, plus ... until you had enough pieces to play
a large number of variants. What would this number be? How small could it
be? And what about promoted pieces? Shogi, allowing multiple gold generals
on the board, could be difficult.

Let's look at this another way. How many pieces are used in one game? If
a 10x10 board is 60% full, that means 30 pieces/side, and 60 total
double-sided pieces. Deduct 10 pawns, leaving 20 pieces. FIDE uses 8, and
the Capa/Carrera use 2 more, leaving 10 pieces. A pair each of towers,
guards, and elephants will cover lances, gold, and silver, as well as
shatranj, makruk and similar games. This takes 6 pieces, leaving 4
available from our hypothetical 30. Now, we already have 4 singleton
pieces, and 6 pairs of pieces [but no promoted pieces for shogi, as we're
looking at double-sided pieces with a white piece on one side and the same
piece in black on the other]. This does, however, give us 10 different
pieces plus the pawn in our set, which currently has 26 disks in it. Is
this actually enough to play almost everything, except shogi? We could add
2 singleton pieces that would double as amazon/dragon bishop and
emperor/dragon rook, bringing our total pieces/side to 28, and maybe use a
go stone placed on a piece to represent promoted shogi pieces. Then, to
bring the total to 30, I'd be inclined to throw in 2 more guard pieces,
making 4 of them. This would give us 10 identical pawns, one set of 4
pieces, five pairs of pieces, and 6 singleton pieces. Would guard pieces
do for promoted-to-gold shogi pieces?

With Shogi, of course, flat pieces are great. But with Shogi the flip sides are used for promotions, so, as I believe you pointed out you will need to add extra disks for promoted pieces.

If you are talking about a 3D game set, such as one I could buy in a store; then I think you might want an 8x8 board, 9x9 and 10x10...all in the same box. Disk pieces would be economical (and you could have relatively inexpensive sticker sheets so the consumer could attach the piece images to the disks themselves) But molded-pieces (without stickers) would have some class and not look cheapo.

Due to lots of piece possibilities my idea would be this:

(A) Have a BASE or STARTER KIT - that would include the 3 boards and enough pieces for several games.

(B) Offer expansion PIECE kits... these would get you more pieces for additional games.

(C) Offer expansion BOARD kits ... this would get you hexagonal boards and other 'specialty boards' Sometimes B and C would need to be combined.

POSSIBLE PROBLEM #1 - 3D pieces can be very nice. Traditional disk and tile pieces are nice. So there might be a big problem getting people to buy disk packs. But, it is possible, Backgammon, Checkers, GO, Pente all use simple pieces. If I was going to buy disk sets they would need to look nice. Molded plastic would have the best chance.

POSSIBLE PROBLEM #2 - Relatively small market. Case in Point: Navia D. has some highly detailed high quality pieces (some of the best I've ever seen) and, in my opinion was a great game that should have made it. But it didn't.

In closing, Starting with a Base or Starter Kit (regardless of how you want to do things) will let you complete the task in phases, rather than trying to get a big monster all out in one shot.

The EconoSplurge set is a fine place to begin from.
http://www.chessvariants.org/crafts.dir/econosplurge.html

Chess Variant Construction Set, a more sophisticated way to do it.
http://www.chessvariants.org/crafts.dir/construction-set.html

Both these sets are capable of adapting to different chess variants, due
to their fractured nature. Combining the set from the first with a wooden
board from the second would make a great set.

However, the second doesn't easily adapt to shifting board variants, and
variants that require an uncheckered board, like Shatranj, Shogi and
XiangQi, which is quite a board of its own, ('require' is a strong word,
but this is really part of the game;) and yes, 3D pieces.

For the pieces, I would suggest having two sets : 3D and 2D . The shapes,
all of them, should be vague, so they can be interpreted as the designer
likes.

i want to add that I always envisioned them to be wooden and have magnetic
edges ..

Hi!

To my point of view, there's two aproaches to the question 'Is there a
Universal/Standart Chess variant'?:

1- Theoretical: to me, the answer is: 'Non'!(Marcel Marceau in 'Silent
Movie') I even dare to paraphrase what Harry Kursh said about franchising
contracts: 'There is not now, never has been, and probably never will be
anithing resembling a 'standart', or 'average', or 'typical' chess
variant'. (Just take a look at the pages to see it, it is intuitive).

2- Comercial: this is an entire different ball game! Taht takes seroius
considerantions:
	i-Is there a market? My answer is yes.
	ii- How big that market is? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that it
can grow fast if well managed (perhaps the people that plays wargames and
miniature games, like Warhammer 40k, gets some interest).
	iii- How to present the product? The starter set and expansions looks
fine to me, but a selling of individual pieces, board tiles and frames to
replace lost and broken itens would be nice.
	iv- What should contain the starter set? A rulebook teaching to assembly
the board and the game rules, two boxes, one for the tile set other for
the pieces, a tile set
(http://www.chessvariants.org/crafts.dir/construction-set.html), a frame
to keep the tiles togheter (2 or more, each for game), a set of plastic
pieces to play the variants (I'm nice with the molded plastic discs, my
personal favorite would be an Estrategolike piece, just rememember to make
the pieces 0.2 inches tall to make easier to handle, without mandarin
nails, to see what I'm talking about try to get quarters from a flat
smooth surface and then aks a long nail woman to do it, see the
diference).
	v- What should contain an expansion set? The rulebook, tiles (if needed),
frame and pieces.
	vi- Wich variants should be in the starter set? No idea.
	vii how much would it cost? No idea again, but I hope that the starter
set should be around US$40.00 and expansions around half, more or less,
after all some will have more pieces, tiles and frames, others not.

A final reminder: some pieces have lifes of their own, like all atoms,
independent of the variants so, could be for sale even whithout a chess
game to them.


Hope I helped. I just took the idea from my hobby set and tried apply some
raw economics and organized structure.

HUgs and pinsts 4UAll

Gentlemen, thank you all for your responses. everyone seems to think 3D
chesslike pieces are what we really want. They can be a little abstract,
but for the 'feel', they need to be 3D and decent. A double-sided token
set, black/white, is doable, but should probably be reserved for those
Eastern variants that normally play with flat pieces. That was my feeling,
too; thank you for confirming it.

This still leaves us with figuring out the specific piece sets.

1)I sometimes come across sets that have both 3D chess pieces and flat pieces (for checkers or backgammon). So, you can have both types, i.e., 3D and 2D... you don't need to limit yourself to one type. I bought a set recently for only $9.99 that has a nice wooden box board, metal pieces (that look really cool silver and bronze in color) and has plastic Backgammon pieces. The set was made in China and I can't imagine why the price is so low...of course, the thing might be toxic :(

2)A game called Heroscape uses plastic hexes that lock together for creating a variety of 'boards.' These can be 3D (with mountains and valleys of different terrain, even rivers)... but you can also make flat hexagonal boards with them. It is a clever interlocking system.

Now, older and wiser in the ways of CVs, I can answer my item vi- wich
variants should be in the starter set? FIDE, Shogi, Xing Qi (Cambaluc) and
Capablanca.

The first three, I guess it is obvious, the Capablanca is just because
would be 4 pieces and a little rulebook, so it's better to be in the
starter set.

Hugs!

Claudio Martins Jaguaribe must be disillusioned with Super-Chess, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=15366, which he endorsed before,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=15369, to omit from the starter set.

No, George.

I just don't believe it should be part of the starter set (it must be
simple), but I do believe that it should be a expansion set, with tiles,
pieces and instructions.

Hugs.