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Interesting point of view, one I am sympathetic toward. FIDE is
over-analyzed. Is shogi, or XiangQi, or any other major variant as analyzed
as FIDE? I also have some reservations, but I'll reserve them for later.
The things we agree on and some recent developments in those areas might be
worth discussing. 

Carlos Cetina has likely gone the farthest with introducing the sense of
wizardry and new possibilities with Universal Chess, a random, shuffle
variant that uses a wide range of variant pieces as well as the usual 5
pieces and pawns. All you are guaranteed to start with is 1 king and 8
pawns. The remaining 7 pieces can come from a set of 24 pieces up to and
experimental set of 70+ pieces. It's a very interesting game, very
tactical. Very high-powered; Carlos is not shy about using a large number
of pieces the equivalent of a queen or even stronger. I would like to see
an entirely short range version of the game, which should be more
strategic. 

Nick Wolff has a strange little offering called PK Chess that certainly
takes the certainty out of the game. I don't know if this exactly has been
done before, but it leads to very wild games. It's a very simple idea. The
FIDE rules hold, with one addition. After each player's 5th turn, all
their pawns change to knights. After the 10th turn, all knights turn to
pawns. After the 15th turn, all pawns -> knights, 20th... George has been
talking about this type of piece in his Pocket Polypiece comments. This is
a fine example of the genre, and I've found it almost playable :-) I keep
thinking that if I just calculated a little better, and planned for the
changes from the beginning, I could set up a decent defense, and then work
on some sort of offense... naah! The game is not stable; it swings toward
chaos, you fight it back, then it takes off again. It's a fun ride, a real
roller coaster.

The last game I'd like to look at is one I haven't played, Shuuro. It's
a commercial game that debuted here last week. For a variantist, it has a
very common weakness in using only the standard FIDE pieces and pawns.
[Maybe someday we'll be able to get decent variant pieces at good prices.]
Beyond that, though, it shows a nice bit of imagination with a 12x12 board,
roomier than most, and the slider-but-not-jumper-blocking plinths that are
randomly placed. The innovation of allowing knights to land on top of them
and stop as well as move 'through' them is quite nice and does a fair job
of enhancing the knights' mobility, and reducing the sliders. This looks
like it could be quite interesting, I'd like to play it. Can we get a
preset? [Maybe if I put this comment on the Shuuro page, where they'll see
it...] This is another game I would like to see shortrange pieces in, that
could move through or on top of the plinths. I'd also like to try letting
the players place the plinths deliberately, each player placing 1 plinth in
each of the 4 quadrants - alternating who goes first in each quadrant.