Mortal Chessgi combines elements of Chess and Chessgi into a game that lets you drop captured pieces, as you would in Chessgi, but in which every capture also reduces overall material, as happens in Chess. It is played like Chessgi except that every captured piece demotes to the next lowest rank, and captured Pawns are removed from play altogether. It is most directly inspired by Karl Scherer's Hydra Chess, which is mostly like this game except that pieces don't change sides. It also has roots in Demotion Chessgi and Bedlam, two previous Chessgi variants of mine that also include the reduction of material. In general, Mortal Chessgi is a more balanced game than Chessgi.
 
The image below is from a game I lost against Zillions. Notice that neither side has all the original pieces. This is due to the demotions that occur with every capture. The checking piece is a dropped Pawn at f5. The ZRF gives you the option of four different piece sets. These include the abstract set pictured below, the magnetic set I included with Magnetic Chess, the motif set pictured with Crazyhouse, and the default Zillions set.
 
For more games by Fergus Duniho, goto http://www.duniho.com/fergus/games