Custom Variants Chess - TvdAuki vs yu-x897 - Play Chess Variants Online - Chess.com+Rematch, click to read the full chat, it's very long lol
A few questions:
A certain pieces doesn't seem very predictable (O for an example), do they actually help the game-play?
Camel doesn't seem a good replacement. Shall we change it?
A certain pieces' placement seem very cramped and undeveloped. Are there meant to be a stage for coordinating the pieces?
Are breakthroughs enough great?
If these problems don't exist, then this variant is perfect (imo)!
It actually depends on what you think is or isn’t predictable enough for standards for being good/bad. But in the case here, it varies on personal opinion. (Fuerzas seems to be a very cursed word)
Imo, the knight-rider (and presumably dabbaba-rider) do not really help the gameplay here.
For the O, in a lot of VW/Pre-VU(?) FOW submissions, having pieces with knight-rider movement generally makes the gameplay unfun (and in my games of this) due to it’s ability to just snipe pieces and give checks randomly, at least compared to pieces like the chancellor in here, rook in ambush, etc. In here, it gets traded off for a better piece, and looking at the position it would be a lot better to have a knight or no piece at all. A general in the place of it could be interesting, but that requires a lot of testing and opinions here, and whether that piece is practical enough to make breakthroughs easier or harder.
For the T, it’s redundant. In most testing games, it sits and does nothing, and also just snipes pieces. It’s a little more predictable when giving check, but it’s still redundant nonetheless. A better alternative would be an alibaba or also, no piece at all. If the O and T are both removed, then adding a M would be a good option.
I do have an experimental suggestion. Changing it to 4-check while changing promotion to 9th (11th using editor) rank with EHQ. This could make games slow and maybe drawish, but if it doesn’t it would make games predictable while incentivizing promotion.
It already looks good as a FOW variant imo, but right now it needs polishing.


then there are almost no majors (it's enough less now)