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Catapults of Troy. Large variant with a river, catapults, archers, and trojan horses! (8x11, Cells: 88) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Mon, Jun 9, 2008 10:34 PM UTC:Poor ★
[Rating Poor to average out the one little Rating it had of Excellent in the very first of fully 22 Comments; everyone else apparently thought not to Rate] Certainly nice artistry in pictorials. Really about 4.5 out of 10 points, Average. Catapults of Troy saves itself from being another sorry entry by both that artwork and the Problem(s) thoughtfully added. Otherwise, as a game, it is the sort of overwrought and over-complicated Rules-set hardly worth constant publication, once so many such are available to peruse. Extremely few would be interested in convolutions like Catapults of Troy, even among Chess-aware intelligent public; yet it is understandable among Chess Variant artists, who care not about wide play of their games and want chiefly to increase their portfolios. Actually, Gifford seems past that stage and we should not expect many new CVs from him. So we can now start to analyse Gifford's work as retrospective, as we have started, for example, with Gilman's, still active, and Betza's. I never felt safe opportunity to Rate Gifford's Average, and Good in certain cases for their over-all presentation, for fear of lampooning by ''prolificist'' addicts. The ''inner circle'' would not consider its mindset of ''quantity over quality'' as intimidating and intolerant of dissent. It falls beyond their comprehension. But really that period is gone, since most CVP readers become aware at last of the untenability of unlimited Rules sets without full evaluation and unintended consequences from ignorance of priority.