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I think many people would be tempted by the strategy Peter mentions, of the 'pawns' getting combined into the back rank pieces early on to build more powerful pieces. The approach I would try in my first game, however, would be to combine pairs of pawns into knights, resulting in having a total of six knights. There's even some logic in demotion: you start with a rook and two pawns, and end with three knights; or a queen and four pawns, and end with five knights. If you carry this idea to its conclusion, you get two bishops, and thirteen knights. In the endgame, you can recombine into whatever more powerful pieces you need. Of course, all this conversion carries a cost in tempo.