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George Duke wrote on Wed, Oct 24, 2007 11:55 PM UTC:
Above Average 6.5 out of 10. The newer prolificists Joe Joyce and Gifford are relatively untested objectively. Here 11 piece-types on 121 are close to the norm roughly 10%(wide divergence sometimes makes a good game too, so this measure is mostly descriptive). Let us begin to place these new bodies of work(as done by looking at 10-15 Charles Gilman's 150 CVs mostly June 2007). Renaissance (1980) 120 squares, Vyremorn (developed 1987-1999) 132, and Jester(1999) 120 are three 'comparables' as a rough starting point, somewhat randomly chosen. PoM and those three all are characterized by being very large 105 to 132 squares(not extremely large: that would be 144-196) and somewhat complicated. There has to be a pretty compelling new mechanism to expect much following for a CV bigger than 85 or 90 squares and so rather complex. Most pieces here are just renamed longstanding variant fare. In PoM of the two actually novel pieces, the Medusa is only another name for 'Ultima/Rococo/Fugue'(PoM predates Fugue) Immobilizer restricted to one, two or three steps. Unique castling rule of trading places and extended Pawn two-step from Rank 3 are possibly unique features. The Sample Game and Problems enhance the product, but over-all somehow lack of imaginativeness compared to Vyremorn and Renaissance. The other two very large Chesses from the same period(excluding earlier Renaissance) have wider more original piece mixes. The other new piece is the Morph, superficially Rococo Chameleon-like. Since captures are not so common or controllable, Morph would remain a prosaic Bishop on the average the first maybe 10 or 20 moves before opportunity to Morph. Just Medusa as restricted maximum-three-stepper and Morph on 8x8, 8x10, 9x10 would make a Good game, but PoM stretched to 121 looks to be long drawn out. It has the usual disadvantage on >=100 of poor Knight(Horse) and Bishop(Adviser) being lost or foresaken by the more powerful long-rangers battling to pick off Pawns or bully those weaker pieces.

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