Construction Chess

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Construction Chess v.2

"Let's deconstruct the FIDE army!"
"How?"

The idea for this variant is to give each player the possibility to construct his own chess army, the way they seem proper.

After some discussions with Ralph Betza and some interesting comments posted on the chessvariants.com page ratings, I decided to update the rules. The new rules deal with the promotion issue and also prevent some killer opening lines (pointed to me by Betza) to those who aren't familiar with Construction Chess openings, i.e., everybody.

	All FIDE rules apply except in the following:
	In the beginning, each player has just the King at his usual place.
	Each player has the following available powers and stones: 15 static pieces 3 Rook powers 3 Bishop powers 2 Knight powers 8 Pawn powers (including the possibility to advance 2 squares in the 1st row for White or 8th row for Black. No en passant) 2 Castling powers (a piece may swap positions with its King, if both are not in check. This power, once used, is removed)
	A static piece cannot move or capture (since it has no powers), and can be captured.
	A piece with a Pawn power when reached the last rank, looses that power, and the piece's owner gains one extra power or one extra static piece (player's choice) to deploy whenever and wherever he decides.
	At each turn, each player can do one of the following things: Drop a static piece on an empty square inside his two ranks (1st and 2nd to White, 7th and 8th to Black) Move one piece Give one available power to any non-royal piece
	Wins the one that mates the opposite King.

note: A Queen is made by adding a Bishop and a Rook power to a certain piece.

note: This idea can be used with Betza's Different Armies concept. Just give each player the proper set of constructing powers for the army he choosed.

variant: The available powers can be split into moving and capturing power. So, each player could have 3 Rook/Bishop/Knight/Pawn moving powers and also 3 Rook/Bishop/Knight/Pawn capturing powers. This was proposed to me, and I do feel that is a step forward in deconstructing the FIDE army (the motivation for this variant) but I also feel that the game loose a lot of clarity, since there will be very strange unfamiliar chess pieces, like in Ultima.