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Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Jan 15, 2009 06:30 AM UTC:
This is an interesting theory, but details of how the pieces were chosen belie it. Certainly part of the motivation was an exercise in choosing pieces subject to a not uncommon restriction, but I would hope the game more playable than one where each letter's piece were indeed chosen randomly.
	The criteria in the introduction rule out most combinations fitting the broader Duke criteria. Using 'as many FIDE piece types as practicable' restricts B, K, P, Q, and R to the FIDE pieces, while 'grouping piece types as much as possible with relatively few one-offs' also rules out vast numbers of combinations. Insisting on 'pieces representable by 4 distinguishable FIDE sets on 4 FIDE boards' rules out too many weak pieces, as pieces of which there are only 1 or 2 should be able to hold their own on a large board. Thus I have chosen to have 8 each of the 4 piece types least suited to being present in small numbers.
	All the same, any comment giving new ideas is welcome. I have been inspired to review my choice of pieces in light of additions to the pool since this idea first came to me, and replaced the Hood, which is really too short-range for a lone piece on a large board, with the long-range Harrower. One of the suggestions for A, Antelope, might be an improvement on Ambrose, both thematically and perhaps in terms of understandability. Coincidentally the Antelope has a subset of the Ambrose destinations but on an unblockable path - like the Nightrider relative to the Rhino. I am deferring highlighting the page as changed until I have decided whether to make that change as well.

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