Rated Comments for a Single Item

I think the problem is that Andy wasn't fully able to see that he hurt Glenn's feelings when he was critical of his chess variant. It is very hard to be critical of a chess variant; see this discussion where I was critical of a variant.

In terms of Dragon, as I said before, I won't play it until a computer implementation is made, and Glenn is currently unwilling to make one. But, yes, I think this kind of Chess + wargame hybrid is a good idea. The rules are a bit complicated for my taste to try and learn this game unassisted, however. Then again, I never played anything more complicated than Axis and Allies without a computer.

I'm adding an excellent rating mainly to counterbalance Andy's poor rating.

- Sam

Poor in part to counteract the excellent, but mostly because that is my
opinion.

The game is needlessly complicated and too confusing to learn, and in
addition, the page and diagram are just plain ugly.  And I believe Andy is
correct in saying that Nicholls' arguments are both condescending and
outrageous, although I'm not sure that the LoTR series qualifies as
'second-rate.'  (I really need to go read 'em...)

At the community college that I graduated from, there was a student
association called 'Writers' Guild,' where students and faculty could
bring things that they had written and get opinions on them.  The one
major rule there was, after reading something you wrote, you couldn't
defend it while other people critiqued - and it WORKED.  I believe that
this community could almost definitely improve if people here acted by
this rule for a while after their articles are posted.

Although my eventual rating matched my initial instinct on reading this
page, I did take time to try and look at the game in more depth. At one
point I wondered whether it was an elaborate spoof of some of the more
theme-heavy variants, particularly as I have been accused of the same with
Sultan's Elephant Chess - and the article featuring my own Forest and
Storm pieces was due to be updated (the latter are now deferred to a later
article). Replies to comments, however, showed no hint of a sense of
humour, so I had to assume that timing is coincidental and take it
seriously.
	So taking it at face value, I have to say that the variant is so badly
presented as to impair playability. On reaching the start of the Pieces
section, I found a paragraph for each piece, but these said nothing of its
move. Instead they just described the physical and emotional nature of the
character represented by the piece. Only after wading through all that,
and yet more waffle about alchemic elements, are there any details of how
pieces actually move. How unlike my Armies of Faith series, rooted in the
four core Occidental pieces, with background to the name (a single-word
name in most cases) of each extra piece in a few clearly italicised
sentences at the end of the piece paragraph. Dragon may be a playable game
but frankly I haven't enough time online to find out.