May be its a bit too slow in the opening (developing 6-9 knights/bishops is a bit boring), and perhaps the queen is not so powerful as its a bit too expensive (or at least it is proibitive to take more than one)
Ps: have you checked "Scacchi fiorentini"?
Well, since in Shuuro you can chose the army, you can opt for a fast army with no knights and pawns and instead lots of queens, rooks and bishops, which is fast to develop, but suffers from lack of materiel for exchanges. On the other hand, if you take the sow and steady approach, you can have a horde of pawns and knights... certainy not fast, but quite scary...
I didn't know the scacchi fiorentini (seen them now), but i do own a copy of Escher chess, which looks fairly similar.
From what i have seen (which may be is not too much) the obstacles forbid the pawns to advance compact and thus to promote, and one could only rely on them for defensive purpose; another thing i noticed of is that without knight to jump over the obstacles it is quite impossible (or at least frustrating) to control some point of the board, as, more often than not, the bishops have to do some crazy manuver to be in a strong position (for the rooks is quite simpler as one choose a spot, pile up 3 or more and the go straight no matter what)
Yes, plinths can be a pain for pawns. On the other hand, you decide where to deploy your pawns.
Yes, the knights are very useful and precious in some areas of the board, but very slow at getting from one 'hot area' to the other.
Bishops are lethal with those huuuge diagonals, and your rooks tactic ony works if you're not facing a massive wall of pawns. Exchanging rooks for pawns is not great fun! ;-)
Hi, I've designed a new variant, called Shuuro.
Here's the rules:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/41702
And here's a video-review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n84N_X6mJo&feature=player_embedded
I would welcome some feedback, and would need help with developing the 4-players expansion, Turanga.
Thanks
Alessio