Things I learned from creating variants ideas

1: avoid “super queens” and pieces that are too strong for a variant

If you dont want to ruin your variant then make sure theres not a piece that is too strong for the variant:

For example, on the first version of one of my variants ideas theres this exact problem: the Actress (pieces on e1 and e10) (aka Super Amazon) which combines Amazon and Camel is too strong for the variant and its the only piece with long diagonal movement, and the Actress can easily be considered a “Super Queen” (Queen + a lot of movements), the best way of fixing this problem is to add more strong pieces or/and replace the piece that is too strong with a weaker one (it doesnt have to be too weak)

2: Avoid super fast fools mate:

the first version of one of my variants idea have this problem: after white plays Actress a4, theres only a few moves that dont lose for black, to fix this problem you need to analyze the variant and then make the necessary changes to avoid super early fools mate (fools mate is the fastest legal checkmate possible, it cant be fully avoided and it is present on every chess variant)

3: dont make boring variants: make sure your variant is fun, theres a lot of ways you can do this, you can add special features/rules to your variant, you can add interesting pieces, just make it fun

ok

New 2. Avoid forced squares and pieces:

For example, there’s this exact problem with all the declined versions of Courierhaus: I was trying to preserve it as a 12-wide game with updated pieces, but nothing better than a Rook. Without a Queen, or even Capablanca’s pieces, I had chosen to put Wildebeest on the 11th and 12th files to keep the game looking like Courier Chess. These Wildebeest can easily be considered “forced pieces” and their files can easily be considered “forced squares” .

Theres a thing that I learned that I forgot to mention: make sure all pieces have purpose: in some versions of one of my variant ideas theres some pieces that have basically no purpose other than making the variant more complex and occupying squares but thats something that I avoid now