Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I have votes from seven of the nine entrants as of January 1.  The four new
people will be eligible to vote in the remaining 6 polls beginning in a
couple of days.

The new rules section will re-open for suggestions on Saturday, after the
deadline for the current voting passes.  The list for Pawns will close for
good at that time, as the February poll will pick the Pawn.

Also, two more suggestions have been posted.

The January poll is done.  Email to our 14 entrants for the February poll
will go out later tonight.  Suggestions are open for everything except the
Pawn (which is being voted on now).

Zillions programmers have six months or so to figure out how to program
the Cube.  If it can be done.  :)

Comments on the field of Pawns:

Eaglet -- Straightforward yet novel.
Novice -- Curious.  Is it stronger or weaker than a standard pawn?
Left/Right Pawns -- Possibly tough to track.
Rapid Pawn -- Another straightforward and appealing entry.
Checkers -- These could be quite powerful.  Is this hybrid good?
Militia -- Rifle-pieces always introduce questions.
Nickel -- Imaginative.
Piece of Eight -- Alone, not so hot...if the Tower of Hanoi wins, :)

Takeover knights: Capture by means other than replacement makes for a
powerful piece, esp. when combined with the possibility of making double
captures (one by replacement, one by overtaking).  This is a bit TOO big
of a gun for my taste, but your mileage may vary.

Footsore camel: Interesting piece.  My value guestimate is somewhere
between bishop and rook, with similar trends throughout the game because
it is a rider of a sort.  It develops about as easily as the bishop,
though perhaps not as flexibly.  I think it could make for some
interesting opening play.

Teleporter: I think this piece is broken.  Since it cannot be captured,
and it can teleport its own king, I can see a large class of drawn
endgames where the weak side's king can perpetually evade check through
teleportation.

Lazy camel: I think it's about knight-valued, overall, and a neat way of
getting the Omega Chess wizard onto an 8x8 board.  It seems mostly
defensive though -- after the bishop-pawn moves, it can make a diagonal
step and attack the opposing side's center, but this seems an opening
move more likely to be threatened than actually carried out.  Perhaps it
would be a good fit for Shatranj with Different Armies.

Mule: Simple, straightforward.  The knight-move makes it want to be used
for a shock troop on the 8x8 board, but its value is more rookish, and it
does have some blanketing power for the endgame.  If it gets voted in,
I'd want some other weak piece to take the knight's place, though.

NnL: By the endgame, this would be almost as powerful as the full-fledged
wildebeest, but in the opening, scarcely more valuable than the knight. 
It constantly tempts the player to trade it off, although it wants to stay
in the game, because it's always getting more valuable.  Another
interesting entry. I think LnN would be an even more interesting piece,
albeit not on this small a board.  Anyone for Seperate Realms Grand
Chess?

Kamikaze: I think 'bomb' pieces need more limitations than this before
they play well with others.

Terminators: Is draw by isolation possible?  They can knock out the entire
center, leaving only files along the edge...

Samurai: I like this one -- the centaur is ordinarily a bit overpowered
(somewhere between a cardinal and a queen, in my estimation) to play well
in the minor piece role (yet maybe use it instead of knightriders in
tripunch chess...), but by forcing compulsory capture on it, it lays down
the question of what lengths are worth going to in order to preserve it
for the endgame, when it might have more freedom because it would not be
so easily trapped.

That's also how I would interpret the proposal...one of the eight squares
adjacent to a S~pawning Queen would need to be vacant to receive the
created Pawn.

Comments about the Queens (11 days to vote!)

Fiend: It might work on the 12x12 board for which it was designed, but
that long leap for an Immobilizer on 8x8 may have problems.

Killer Immobilizer: This feels like too many rules.

Tower of Hanoi: The objection to this creative piece is its use of sixteen
checkers in addition to the usual pieces.  But the idea has worthwhile
potential anyway.

Queen+Lame Camel: Does Camel Chess need a camel?  If so, this is a
reasonable choice.

Queckers: A multi-moving Queen scares me.  :)

Ancestral Dragon: Knowing what a simple knight relay does, the relay power
of this piece seems over the top.

The S~Pawn~ing Queen: I wish the proposal had not allowed for up to 12
pawns on a side.  That's a lot.

I'm not sure which way to go.  But I'm looking forward to the Bishops
next month, which have some really cool ideas.

Just two days left for the voters to pick a new Queen!  If you want in on
the remaining three polls (Bishops, the second New Rule, and Rooks) then
send in a suggestion for one or more of them.  :)

I am also starting to look at ideas for how to organize Luotuoqi II,
possibly without the limitation of the standard set.  Given the long
history of chess on somewhat bigger boards, here's my first idea:

The game is for a 10 x 10 board.

First ballot selects three 'doubled' pieces (two of each in setup), and
a fourth- through seventh- choice as possible extras.

Second ballot selects three 'single' pieces (one of each in setup), and
a fourth- and fifth choice as possible extras.

Third ballot selects a pawn to be used, including oddities such as
promotion and multiple step.

Fourth ballot selects three extra rules, with a 100-word limit instead of
50 words.

Fifth and final ballot selects a setup.  This would include three to seven
'doubled' pieces, three to five 'single' pieces, a king, and the row
of pawns (which may be staggered on more than one rank, or have holes). 
Assuming a full row of 10 pawns...which is not mandated, although it is
likely...this makes for 20 to 30 pieces per side according to voter
preference.

Your comments are invited.

Selecting a royal piece might be an interesting addition to Luotuoqi II.  I
can think of more than a few ideas.  :)

Handicapping the Bishops...which are a very good lot...

Diagonal Bypasser is not quite as fearsome as it looks; it must move at
least three squares to capture anything.  (Does it capture friendly pieces
as well?)

Roc is sound, and incorporates the Camel's traditional move.  But it is
perhaps more tame than some other choices.

Hopping Bishop is another reasonable colorbound piece, somewhat stronger
than a straight Bishop.

Bishop + Lame Camel has theme going for it, if the voters buy the 'Camel
Chess needs a Camel' theory.

Dualist Monk has a few too many rules for my taste.

Chaplain has not quite so many rules.  Since our Pawns (the Eaglets) do
not promote, having a 'Bishop' that can is of interest, especially if a
relatively strong 'Rook' joins the Tower of Hanoi and the Mule.

Sliding Bishop is an elegant way to let the Bishops change colors, if that
is desired.

Crooked Picket is a zigzag piece, which I confess to not liking much on a
personal level.  Yet it could fit this game.

I lean toward Chaplain, Diagonal Bypasser, Sliding Bishop, Roc, B + Lame
Camel, but am listening to persuasion attempts.

Diagonal Bypasser: This is one of the better means I've seen of 'taming'
non-replacement capture -- the long move ensures that a careful setup is
needed before the bypasser can capture anything at all.  But actually I'm
concerned it's a little bit TOO weak in a game that features the Tower of
Hanoi.  Since it's almost always going to be beneficial to split the
Tower up as much as tempi allow (eight extra pawns are better than a
queen, so just think about eight Commoners...), the board will probably
get pretty crowded, leaving the bypasser all but paralyzed.

Roc: Camel + another leaper seems to be to be better suited for a larger
board, or at least a less crowded one.  There's a fool's mate on
white's second move. Those camel leaps are dangerous on this board, and
with another leaper to help set them up...

Hopping bishop: Ordinarily I would hesitate before putting something this
powerful (somewhere between rook and cardinal) as a 'minor' piece, but
with a rook-class knight, half-knight pawns, and a (who knows? maybe
double strength?) queen, this end up playing very well with the others. 
The dangerousness of the leap-rider will be lessened on the crowded board
I expect for this game.

B + lame camel: Not necessarily an inspired piece... but certainly
functional in its role.  It should be about rook value for most of the
game, which does seem to be in keeping with the standards set by our
previous choices.  And it does include the theme movement.

Dualist monk: A piece that splits slows the game down, but we already have
the Tower.  On the other hand, doublemoving speeds the game up.  On the
third hand, its short range makes it entirely defensive.  I have no clue
whether I like this piece or not.

Chaplain: Perhaps the most conservative color-changeable bishop
imaginable, and it seems to me to be a good implementation of a
color-changeable bishop.  My only concern is that its promotion abilities
imply the potential to promote to another Tower of Hanoi, just at that
point in the game when the Tower fragments were beginning to finally get
cleaned up.

Sliding bishop: Another good implmentation of a color-changeable bishop. 
I guesstimate its strength as slightly less than rook, which seems about
right for this game.  And it does include a non-capturing lame camel. :)

Crooked picket: A neat way of 'taming' the cardinal-class crooked bishop
down into a more minor piece role -- my guesstimate is that it weighs in
at just under rook-strength, like many of the other pieces here.  And it
does include a lame camel movement as part of its move, for those who are
interested in voting the theme.

At this point, I like the sliding bishop, the crooked picket, and the
hopping bishop, though I have no idea what order those will be in by the
end of the month, and the dualist could easily find its way onto that list
as well.

just a short response to the last comment.

The sliding bishop's non-capturing move do not seem to include the
camel,
Since it is bishop plus optional wizir, it must be a n-n move or a color
changing one, neither of which include the camel.

When I first read the rule for The Cube, I had assumed it was a piece that
changed hands (using a Reversi piece) on the board, and the question I had
was: How does a Cube move?

Now I see that it's just an off-board marker, I'm disappointed.  But
I'm already ready for the first Variant on Luotuoqi:  The Cube is a piece
that moves like Ralph Betza's Ghost, and starts in the same square(s). 
Now if your opponent threatens to mate you with a double-ply move in two
by tossing The Cube, you can unlock the game by threatening the Cube,
forcing him to take his double-ply move off-tempo and/or abandon the
attempt all together.  Far-fetched, but fun to see, if only once.

In a very divided vote, the winner is the Diagonal Bypasser.  A different
method of counting votes might have given either the Sliding Bishop or
Chaplain the nod.  I'll add this to the page over the weekend.

Thanks to everyone who has voted on New Rules so far; that poll closes on
the 30th.