George, thank you for taking the time to look over and comment on this pair of shatranj variants. I especially thank you for the reference to Ralph Betza's Augmented Knights article of 1994. I truly appreciate the historical references; to someone like me, who has just passed 3 years not merely as a member of CV but only being aware this site and the world of chess variants existed, the information is invaluable. 

The 'D' [for 'dababbah'] variant here is my 4th CV design, created in early-mid 2005 under the working name of 'Shatranj Capablanca'. Its evolution is documented in 'Two Large Shatranj Variants'. This rules page is an abstract from that series of games, posted so any players would have a clear, concise set of rules with no ambiguities, as 2Large is a game system rather than a game, and gives a number of options, though not coming close to your '91.5 Trillion...' series of articles. The 'R' [for 'rook'] version was added later at the suggestion of David Paulowich [as noted in the text], with whom I have had a number of private email discussions on the advisability of using rooks in variant designs. [A bit of trivia: Michael Nelson, in a private email, opposed changing to a rook; he, too, felt the DW piece was a better design fit for this game. I, hoping to see the game played, went both ways. Personally, I prefer the D version, and will play that unless my opponent wishes to use rooks.] Thus, the 2 pictures, which are both initial setups and clickable buttons for presets.

As far as names, I have often agreed that I am not good at them. The name 'general' was taken directly from the CVPages rules for historical shatranj; 'elephant' is the English translation of 'al fil', I believe; and the deliberately misspelled 'dababbah' is meant to indicate the piece has an additional wazir move - warmachine seems to be an acceptible substitute.

As for prior use of pieces, Joshua Morris posted 'Kozune' 2 months before I posted 2Large, in which he explicitly uses the NAF and NDW pieces. If not for a David Paulowich comment, I would have been unaware of this, because I overlooked Mr. Morris excellent game, thinking it was an Eastern variation with drops. I generally avoid drop variations, as I've only been playing [again, after high school in the 60's] for just over 3 years, and have enough troubles with Western variations. In reading Mr. Betza's work, I find these 2 pieces implied, but not demonstrated, as he adds only one augmentation to the knight in each case. But these are logical and obvious pieces, and I'm sure their original creators are lost in history, just as the AF and DW piece creators are.

There is a unifying theme ['slightly' broken by the use of rooks] to this game, that of very short range pieces that are all 2-square leapers. This changes some aspects of the game: there can be no pins, nor can a piece interpose to block a check [in the rookless original variant], as is also noted by Mr. Morris in Kozune. No piece can ever be blocked from moving to any square within its given range of movement, except by a friendly piece occupying the square; all threats are immediate. 

With your comments here including references to Ralph Betza's work, and that of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Jetan in your recent Chieftain Chess comments, I feel you are praising me with faint damns. As a fledgling CVer, I never anticipated being put in any such lofty company. I look forward to any comments you might make on my Grand, Atlantean Barroom, and Lemurian shatranj variants.