Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Three items of news for Queens or Castles:

1) Least important: On the Rules Page I placed a 3D computer graphic (that
I made) showing how I think a real 3D Diplomat piece would look (based on
the related Diplomat Alfaerie Graphic).

2) I made a preset for this game.  See following link.  Graphics in the
preset do not match those in the rules 100% as I did not see a link to the
miscellaneous piece set that included the Jester and Diplomat.  But the
substitutes are easy to understand. Rules are not enforced by the
pre-set.

http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DQueens+or+Castles+%3F%26settings%3DQueensCasltes

3) I've tested the most recent L.L. Smith ZRF (Beta version) of this game
(not yet released).  L. L. Smith has done a great job in getting some
tricky functionality to work properly ... I am aware of some of the behind
the scenes tinkering with code, and Larry is certainly an impressive and
respectable coder.  Hopefully we will see the final ZRF in the very near
future.

Michael: To answer your question, 'Do the Queeen's starting squares need
to be empty for the synergism move?

Yes.  Because synergism [which allows a player to exchange 2 of his Queens
for 4 Rooks] does two things: (1)it replaces each of 2 Queens with a
Rook and (2) it adds a Rook to each of the Queens’ original starting
squares.

Note:  L.L. Smith's nice Zillions .zrf of this game lets you practice
synergisms and the program will perform them too.

Thanks for the question.