Well, over this Spring and Summer I've got rid of the seven variants that I felt least measured up to my usual standard. It made me feel a bit better about ading two new ones over that same period. For the record the casualties are the two Dabbaba Qi pages, Epping (and New) Forest Chess, Half Shoxiang, Kamil Crater Chess, Maharajah's Well Chess, and Sultan's Elephant Chess. I have deleted all record of the content of these pages, so they are gone for good. I am retaining Neutral Subject Chess as well as I'm a Wazir... as other contributors have given such positive responses to them.
The next tranche of variants that I am considering discontinuing are as follows:
Anglis Qi modified to add Cannons and Arrows, which makes for quite a cramped 8x8 board.
Crooked Board Chess, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Emperor's Nobility 3d Latrunculi, a not very Chess-like 3d variant with a complex chain of promotions.
Gateway Chess, another one-off microregional like many of those that have already gone and with awkward not-very-Chess-like extra rules.
Intrusive Squares, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Partnership Mitregi, an 8x8 promotion-free Shogi variant.
Pawn the Brain, originally a showcase for divergent-piece names that I have replaced with a simple prefix for the original Take the Brain pieces.
Sextuple Besiege Wellisch, a hex version of my Quadruple Besiege variants and hard to illustrate.
Square Versus Hex and Xiangcata, two variants whose mixture of geometries forces my Man and Beast to qualifying some pieces "only avaliable in 3d" with "usually".
I would therefore be interested to know what everyone thinks of getting rid of them, and whether anyone rallies to their defence. Crooked Board and Intrusive Squares, in particular, I feel are overdoing what the two Dream Chess pages and L-shaped Chess do relatively well. Pawn the Brain escaped the first tranche of deletions only because it takes up so little memory. Gateway Chess escaped because I am thinking of reusing the name for a cubic-cell variant - still with concavities but with no shopping-related rules - and would be interested to read what others think of my new idea.
The new Gateway Chess would be based on the fact that one large and two small Xiang Qi sets are a good way to get 1 aside of 1 piece type, 2 aside of 6, and 4 aside of 6 more - I have in mind Emperor for the first, Queen/Duchess/Governor/Oberon/Samurai/Churchwarden for the next group, and Rook/Bishop/Unicorn/Ninja/Sextojn/Knight for the last group. Unfortunately it has only 10 aside of whatever Pawnlike piece I would choose, which is why I would envisage the front rank of each camp as a relatively narrow "Gateway".
The next tranche of variants that I am considering discontinuing are as follows:
Anglis Qi modified to add Cannons and Arrows, which makes for quite a cramped 8x8 board.
Crooked Board Chess, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Emperor's Nobility 3d Latrunculi, a not very Chess-like 3d variant with a complex chain of promotions.
Gateway Chess, another one-off microregional like many of those that have already gone and with awkward not-very-Chess-like extra rules.
Intrusive Squares, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Partnership Mitregi, an 8x8 promotion-free Shogi variant.
Pawn the Brain, originally a showcase for divergent-piece names that I have replaced with a simple prefix for the original Take the Brain pieces.
Sextuple Besiege Wellisch, a hex version of my Quadruple Besiege variants and hard to illustrate.
Square Versus Hex and Xiangcata, two variants whose mixture of geometries forces my Man and Beast to qualifying some pieces "only avaliable in 3d" with "usually".
I would therefore be interested to know what everyone thinks of getting rid of them, and whether anyone rallies to their defence. Crooked Board and Intrusive Squares, in particular, I feel are overdoing what the two Dream Chess pages and L-shaped Chess do relatively well. Pawn the Brain escaped the first tranche of deletions only because it takes up so little memory. Gateway Chess escaped because I am thinking of reusing the name for a cubic-cell variant - still with concavities but with no shopping-related rules - and would be interested to read what others think of my new idea.
The new Gateway Chess would be based on the fact that one large and two small Xiang Qi sets are a good way to get 1 aside of 1 piece type, 2 aside of 6, and 4 aside of 6 more - I have in mind Emperor for the first, Queen/Duchess/Governor/Oberon/Samurai/Churchwarden for the next group, and Rook/Bishop/Unicorn/Ninja/Sextojn/Knight for the last group. Unfortunately it has only 10 aside of whatever Pawnlike piece I would choose, which is why I would envisage the front rank of each camp as a relatively narrow "Gateway".