For most of the things I've thrown together, I've done some sort of calculations and/or careful comparisons to existing variants in an effort to keep things balanced. This is the only one that's mainly, as you say, "painting" boards with nice-looking pieces, so I'm not at all sure how balanced this is; I fear that I may have overpowered things, most significantly in the Air pieces.
I've actually never seen a copy of the Dragon Chess rules; this was more inspired by noticing a surprising number of pieces that are named for sea and air creatures. Learning of the Ship sealed the idea; coming across a Strato Chess set on Amazon (I had one when I was a kid) spawned the Air level.
I'd like to try this against an AI, but for some reason this old programmer is finding the idea of doing so rather overwhelming, and the sheer number of pieces in this is only a part of the reason. That said, any recommendations that would work for this one would be welcome.
For most of the things I've thrown together, I've done some sort of calculations and/or careful comparisons to existing variants in an effort to keep things balanced. This is the only one that's mainly, as you say, "painting" boards with nice-looking pieces, so I'm not at all sure how balanced this is; I fear that I may have overpowered things, most significantly in the Air pieces.
I've actually never seen a copy of the Dragon Chess rules; this was more inspired by noticing a surprising number of pieces that are named for sea and air creatures. Learning of the Ship sealed the idea; coming across a Strato Chess set on Amazon (I had one when I was a kid) spawned the Air level.
I'd like to try this against an AI, but for some reason this old programmer is finding the idea of doing so rather overwhelming, and the sheer number of pieces in this is only a part of the reason. That said, any recommendations that would work for this one would be welcome.