Comments by ekman

The pieces for the jetan presets are set up wrong. Chief and princess should change places on both sides, so that chief stands to the left, as seen from each player. Note that this does not affect gameplay, since the moves can just be mirrored. It would still be nice to have the board set up the right way.

It would also be nice to have the red and blue pieces switch sides, since the proper game has black pieces playing from south and orange from north.

If there are any aspects of the rules that are not clear, please check the rules of jetan (edited from Burroughs' original for greater clarity).

After almost 20 years, this is still the best existing computer implementation of jetan. It contains lots of variants, which may be slightly confusing, especially for the beginner. If you want to play the game that Burroughs intended, and that I have researched in my article Exploring Jetan at ERBzine, then you should choose the variant "Chained Wild Jetan with Chained Warriors".

I love Larry Smith's analysis, as shown in this article, but I am not comfortable with his conclusion that all variants of jetan were created equal. In my own analysis of jetan, published at ERBzine, I would like to think that I have shown conclusively that most of the jetan variants can in fact be treated as apochryphal. In Smith's terminology, the following pieces should be treated as "correct":

Chained Panthan, Chained Thoat, Chained Warrior, Chained Padwar, Chained Dwar, Chained Flier, Chained Wild Chief, Brave Chained Wild Princess

A case could be made to use the Free Thoat in place of the Chained, and there is also an optional board set-up. But otherwise, Burroughs' rules emerge as pretty clear after a thorough analysis.

Late comer to the discussion here. Regarding the piece values, there are many takes on this. I list most of the ones I know about in my recent ERBzine article about jetan. Follow the link below, and scroll about two thirds down the page to the appendices. 

Exploring Jetan, from ERBzine