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This is a re-posting of the 'Long & Short of it' Comment.

Thank you David for pointing out the '&' is an illegal character in the original title. Now everybody can ignore it again... [could the editors delete the original posting?]

Recently a few of us have been pushing shortrange pieces, and several games featuring them have been posted in the [relatively] recent past. I'm starting to see reactions to this, and have gotten some comments, questions, and observations. What I'd like to use this thread for is discussions of some of the things that seem interesting or relevant to game design. One question I'd like to eventually answer was indirectly posed by my opponent in a game comment. We were discussing some of the ancient clunky pieces and my opponent made the comment that they 'didn't feel like real pieces'. So, one of the long-range questions here will be:

'What is a *real* piece?'

In a recent comment on 'Hoo Mitregi', Andy made this statement: 'For shortrange pieces, I find balance is better, both short and long in same game. Control of ranks, files, diagonals is such big part of chess strategy. But I have not much experience in games all shortrange' and this got me to thinking about exactly what pieces control. Ranks, files and diagonals are linear features that extend from side to side of the board, and are controlled best by a long-range piece that can sit in a protected corner and exert influence across the board. So why are short-range pieces any good at all? Just what do they do, if they don't and can't control the linear features that are 'such big part of chess strategy'?

Shortrange pieces control points and local areas. The secret to decent shortrange pieces is to not make them weak versions of longrange pieces, but to give them moves longrange pieces don't get. The knight is today's vestigal shortrange piece, combining both the jump and the 'crooked' move that no [FIDE] longrange piece gets. So, give pieces steps, jumps, both a step and a jump, let them change direction during the jumpstep move, let them jump twice. A very powerful shortrange piece can control most of or a major chunk of a board. [See, for example, the 'Flexible Knight' in Two Large Shatranj Variants.] They do this by hazarding themselves more taking a position in the middle of the board, where a range of 3 or 4 squares has maximal coverage. But they are still covering points and areas, not linear features like today's bishop, rook and queen.