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Hey Joe.  I guess we could swap the positions of the Knight and Bishop (and
maybe even Rooks).  The main idea I was looking at was to keep the pieces
in their same columns, but have placement in the first three rows, with
pawns in the second or third row, and the other pieces behind them.  I
would allow for swapping of king and queen pieces.  I believe we also need
some guidelines like:
1. Castling is only permitted if the King is in the same row as a Rook at
the start of the game.  I would also look to have it so that the King would
need to have pieces between it and a Rook.
2. Rooks must be either a row behind or in the same row as the King.
3. Pawns on the second row get to move one or two spaces to start.  These
pawns that move one or two spaces are at risk of being En Passante'd. 
Pawns that start in the third row only move one space forward to start.  En
Passante is a weakness of a pawn, that another pawn can do to it.
4. Unless randomly selecting formation to start (like a shuffle), the
white player picks what formation they want to use, then the black player
selects their formation.
5. King and Queen may swap position (this changes how castling might
work).  Bishop, Knight and Rook stay in the same column they would normally
be in FIDE Chess.

My preference includes using King capture instead of checkmate, and also
promoting pawns to pieces that have been captured, but I don't want to
make this a requirement.  The focus is on formations.  Also, if people want
to have more modifications, feel free to here.  These are guidelines. 
Again, the key is adoption of the basic idea, not holding this locked down
and unchangeable.

I leave it up to others to play with more.  I have played around with
multiple formations using Fritz and ChessV and Zillions, and you get
interesting results here that look like it is playable.  Anyone want to
write this up as a legitimate chess variant?

I personally believe formations are a worthy element to be added to the
world of chess variants.  By combining it with mutators, different board,
reserve (pocket) pieces, and other things, I believe we can have a way to
have a version of chess with a LOT of different scenarios, maybe even a base version that could serve as THE main form of chess for the variant community.