I am a bit unhappy with the way we select featured variants, because it seem to lead to a presentation that is very much biased towards what we could call "Chess with Alternative Armies": variants that differ from orthodox Chess by the participation of a view pieces that move with slightly different leaps, perhaps on a somewhat larger board. Now I admit that these are the variants that I like best too, but the world of chess variants offers so much more.
Perhaps we should reconsider the idea that we should feature mainly variants that are already popular on this site. Our regular visitors will already know those, and others will be guided to those easily enough by other mechanism (such as the Our Favorites menu item, or the Game Courier logs). If the featured variants do exactly the same thing, it really serves no purpose at all. I think it would be much more useful to feature variants that involve some rather original concept.
And then I don't mean "wow, this has a piece that makes a (0,3) leap", but rather pieces that explode on capture (Atomic Chess), need to be captured twice before they disappear (Golem Chess), involve move induction (Knight Relay Chess), can swap pieces (Odin's Rune Chess), morph into other types (Kyoto Shogi, Bishop-Knight Morph Factor), have moves that depend on location (Elk Chess). Also multi-move variants (Marseillais, Chieftain Chess), multiple royalty (Extinction Chess), 'capture the flag' winning conditions (King of the Hill, Racing Kings), alternative winning conditions (Three-Checks, Suicide), neutral pieces (Duck Chess), incomplete information (Dark Chess), irregular board shapes (Balbo's Chess), irregular tilings (Singularity Chess). It seems to me most of these peculiarities have no chance at all to be in any featured variant, the way we go about it now.
I am a bit unhappy with the way we select featured variants, because it seem to lead to a presentation that is very much biased towards what we could call "Chess with Alternative Armies": variants that differ from orthodox Chess by the participation of a view pieces that move with slightly different leaps, perhaps on a somewhat larger board. Now I admit that these are the variants that I like best too, but the world of chess variants offers so much more.
Perhaps we should reconsider the idea that we should feature mainly variants that are already popular on this site. Our regular visitors will already know those, and others will be guided to those easily enough by other mechanism (such as the Our Favorites menu item, or the Game Courier logs). If the featured variants do exactly the same thing, it really serves no purpose at all. I think it would be much more useful to feature variants that involve some rather original concept.
And then I don't mean "wow, this has a piece that makes a (0,3) leap", but rather pieces that explode on capture (Atomic Chess), need to be captured twice before they disappear (Golem Chess), involve move induction (Knight Relay Chess), can swap pieces (Odin's Rune Chess), morph into other types (Kyoto Shogi, Bishop-Knight Morph Factor), have moves that depend on location (Elk Chess). Also multi-move variants (Marseillais, Chieftain Chess), multiple royalty (Extinction Chess), 'capture the flag' winning conditions (King of the Hill, Racing Kings), alternative winning conditions (Three-Checks, Suicide), neutral pieces (Duck Chess), incomplete information (Dark Chess), irregular board shapes (Balbo's Chess), irregular tilings (Singularity Chess). It seems to me most of these peculiarities have no chance at all to be in any featured variant, the way we go about it now.