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And the Winner is:

Pentauranga by Graeme Neatham.

Second through fourth are:

Disintegration Chess by Gary Gifford

Quake [the orthochess piece version] by Abdul-Rahman Sibahi

Half-Shogi by Charles Gilman.

Congratulations, Graeme, Gary, Abdul-Rahman, and Charles. The 4 finalists here stood out in a very interesting field. Kudos to Graeme, whose game stood out among the finalists. An excellent job.

The games were judged on a number of criteria: playability, depth of play, ease of play, originality, presentation of rules and game... and a bunch of subjective stuff, too. Some games not here were very close, but missed because the judges felt they had flaws just a bit worse than the ones that made the finals. Decision and clarity were important here. We found at least one game that missed because the beginning was weak, or the middle had weak play, or the end was weak, possibly with mating issues. 

No entry is perfect; the winner is difficult to play until you have had some practice, and you want movement illustrations in front of you. Nonetheless, in spite of the almost fatal flaw, we found this game to be the most creative and deepest of the entries because the clever board and piece geometries give the game the feel of a 'full-size' board, something that no other entry matches. Gary's game is the most imaginative in the pieces and overall rules, with 3 exploding kings per side and a new piece. Abdul-Rahman has a nice work-around on the size restriction in Quake [but his rules could be better]. Charles seems to have achieved the often-elusive goal of elegant simplicity in Half-Shogi, which has a little more to it than meets the eye. But at the end of the day, geometry won. 

I'd like to thank everybody who participated. Even the misses were often very interesting ideas, and always fun to look at. Some deserve more work. [Okay, there might be one or two that deserve a lot more work; pushing the pieces around a bit even if you don't actually playtest is an excellent idea. :-) ] We felt simple changes in a number of games would improve them. Of course, it's easy to say that in hindsight, with a couple dozen other examples handy, and 2 or 3 people working together. I agree it's also unavoidably subjective, even though we try to be objective. Other people would surely order the entries differently. We did lean against very strong pieces in the judging; that is a question of taste. We felt small boards and great power don't mix well. You may not agree - but then, next contest, you may help judge, please! ;-) I will cheerfully let others share the blame for 'overlooking that masterpiece!' But I invite any and all comments, criticisms, or suggestions on these results or a next contest.

Joe