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Joe Joyce wrote on Wed, Apr 4, 2007 08:05 PM UTC:
Ah, the Voice of Doubt speaks... ;-) 
Truthfully, you've expressed what I imagine most people would think as
soon as they see this game: 'It's too big! How can I ever understand it,
much less play it?' Maybe you're right, maybe it is too complicated for
anyone to even be able to play... 
My original answer went on a lot longer, and got nowhere, so I'll give
you the short answer: No. 
This is not too hard to play. It is a bit more complex than FIDE, with a
few more things to remember, but it's a lot more straightforward and much
easier to understand how to play well than Alice, for example. On a 1-10
scale, with tic-tac-toe as 1, checkers as 2 and chess as 3, this is 4,
max. 
There are 10 piece types, some of which can get modified by 5 movement
symbols. Not all that bad, maybe; let's look a bit...
The diamond symbols are speed limits for the familiar FIDE sliders. Yeah,
you have to count to 4, 8, or 12, but you do that sort of thing anyway in
chess, figuring turns in advance, where a knight can get, can this pawn
queen before... And the use of the other 4 symbols is as obvious, and they
only apply to the modern elephant and dabbabah. 
It comes down to interest. If you're interested, this is not difficult to
learn, given any familiarity with variants, in my opinion.