The rules indicate that the volcanoes are randomly placed, but some things are not specified. Are they placed symmetrically and always on the middle 2 ranks? Do you see the volcano placement when you begin setting up pieces or not until the first move?
Dark Prince: Always on the middle ranks, but placed after both players set up an army. I think it would be a big improvement to alreadt place volcanoes on the map before setting up an army, as a player can set up accordingly to the different terrain.
joshi tm: The one feature that really prevents a solid unstoppable defense was the implementation of random volcanos. On IYT "ialwayswinsam" and myself had a way of setting up an unstoppable defense. b/c we always knew the volcano set up prior to the match. Now it cant be done, you have to gamble on the setup which isnt tacticly sound and involves luck. We however rarely ever used this tactic unless we needed a must win. I had a record of appx 300 wins and less than 12 loses until i timed out of 33 games at once due to lack of internet access. As for saying something making it true or untrue the same works both ways. (and just b/c majority rules doenst make it a good or prudent choice.) And as for being able to move backwards that would not be good. to much to explain here. The rule i always favored is the original: equal rank attacks remove both pieces. This is why this game has always favored the aggressor. Which i will explain in a new post.