Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Another clean design by Gary Gifford.  Nothing here but the pawns, king, and fully-loaded trojan horse.  Set-up-your-pieces opening, essentially.  Interesting, but personally I prefer a bigger variety of pieces.

I can still admire the clean design!

Um, let me try this again. This is a really great game. But when you're
trying to say that and the designer has to defend himself from your
excellent rating, you've probably done something wrong. My sincere
apologies. My only excuse is that it was late and I'd taken several cold
pills an hour before. Apparently for me, typing while sleeping is as
dangerous as driving while sleeping. I was far too forceful in expressing
some of my points. 'Maddening complexity' is one instance. I never
actually beat my head against the keyboard (although if you look at the
game, you'll see several spots where I wanted to) or even came close,
except over some of my own errors. Hard as it may be to believe, I was
trying to compliment the game, and encourage people to play it. I think it
would make an excellent tournament game next time around. So, let me try
this again.
I do believe it is opening-sensitive, and here's why: 99% of variants
have all their piece starting positions pre-determined, and the sides
almost always mirror one another. Almost never does a piece on its
starting square attack an opposing piece. SoT requires you to set up your
own pieces as moves in the game. Now you have to work to balance the other
guy's setup, and may wind up with a considerably different setup. This is
an 'extra area', where players can gain or lose during setup. This
can't happen in FIDE. But this is a bonus, making the game quite unique,
to the best of my knowledge. It appears that playing through a number of
openings would help you determine better piece placements. If one player
makes significantly better piece placements, that advantage may easily
carry through the game. 
I see this as a whole new area, you see it as 'much more opening
variety'. I obsess over placements, counting squares a jamal or dabbabah
can reach, trying to ensure that pieces can support each other; it's not
necessarily simple for everyone. I always had trouble with free set-ups in
wargames. It generally took me a few repeats of a game to have an idea of
how to do the initial piece placement. And, of course, an opponent,
knowing your preferences, can adjust his placement to disrupt yours. This
helps make the game excellent, regardless of how it's seen.
Finally, the 'Nice job'. That should have been 'Tremendous job'. I'm
looking forward to playing this again. I want (need) to learn how to use
the Trojan horse. It's an outstanding piece. 
As far as resigning too quickly, you had me good - you just got the 2nd
rook, and controlled my back rank. I was hoping to start again, and play a
much more even game, now that I have some idea of how placement and drops
work. This game deserves a better test than I gave it so far.

I greatly appreciate Joe Joyce's recent comments, But I would like to
expand upon them:
JJ-Point A: 'It is probably extremely sensitive to beginning play' 
GG-I think Chess is much less forgiving and much more sensitive.  With SOT
you can create your own setup; and unless you make a real blunder, you can
likely play just about any opening and make it into the middle-game... to
about the same degree that you can in Shogi.
JJ-Point B: '...certainly you can win or lose quickly in this game.'
GG: While one can plant the seeds of defeat, this game is much safer for
the second player (black) than many other games, including Chess. 
White's initiative here is essentially non-existent.  Shogi is similar,
in that respect.  However, I do suspect that a much stronger player will
defeat a much weaker player without too much difficulty, but this seems to
be the case with most games involving logical deployment of pieces.
JJ-Point C: 'Several layers of play with all their complex choices are
built from a few simple ideas in an easy-to-understand game. You've made
a maddeningly complex easy-to-understand game.'
GG: The Opening phase is simple: Move a Trojan Horse around and drop off
pieces to create your intitial setup.  If desired, keep a piece or two in
the Horse for an attack.  Other than that, it is very much like Shogi with
Shatranj pieces (and a few closely related orthoganal counter-parts.)  Is
it 'Maddeningly Complex?' I don't think so.  I think it is at the level
of Shogi with much more opening variety.  But players of Chess and or Shogi
should be able to jump right in with no headaches.
JJ-Point D: 'Nice job.'
GG: Thanks.  JJ and I played a test game of this and it played quite well.
 There is lots of room for experimentation as to what opening lines are
best.  Should anyone review the 'test game' please note that I think JJ
threw in the towel too quick.  In games inwhich you can drop pieces it is
usually good to play on until the inevitable.  For example, I was once
getting crushed in a face-to-face Shogi game.  Resignation looked logical.
 But I mated the guy with a Knight and a Gold-General drop... (of course,
that is much more likely in over-the-board play, or in real-time internet
play... without days of delay).

links to Malcolm Maynard's implementation of five historic variants from the Case Western Reserve Historical Chess site. Graphics by L. Lynn Smith.

The link to the new malfunctioning game courier is as follows: Thanks in advance for your help in getting this to work. Sincerely, Gary

Link to preset

wouldn't you drop the pieces pretty quickly?
it is a pretty interesting idea that if the trojan horse is captured,
whatever inside is given to the opposition, makes life dangerous if you
try to advance the t-horse inside enemy lines .. i know when i first read
that rule i thought .. 'oh that is heavy, lose the t-horse and what is
inside enemy gets', but, i think i like it now , it would make you be careful, 
you just couldn't afford to lose t-horse with pieces inside anyway, 
so i couldn't see it happening that often  .. 
once again, terrific looking game.

I like the inclusion of the Wazir, Ferz, Camel, and Elephant. These pieces form a natural sequence: two Wazir's moves at right angles make a Ferz's move, two Ferz's moves at right angles make a Camel's move, and two Camel's moves at right angles make an Elephant's move. That makes me wonder, though, whether the Trojan Horse should contain a Bishop instead of a Knight. Or maybe I just think that because I missed the Bishops while playing Shatranj recently.

Speaking of which, the inclusion of drops will of course prevent the game from ending in a long slow war of attrition.

I would probably play quite badly at first, but I'd love to try this game.

looks brilliant!!
where is the zrf!!!
lol :)