Well, buck..
Turning aside from the tone of your comment, I'll try to explain the reasonings behind the 'flaws' you listed.
As a spirited chess player myself too, I realize that you can't make nice conversion of the game to be completely satisfactory for everyone, especially for hard-headed 'chess veterans'. Even if you make a small, irrelevant change in the rules, it's not Chess. But, if you want to play Chess, there are plenty of opportunities for that over the internet, or amongst your real-live friends - which is kinda more preferable in my opinion.
This is only a board game made for the Elements forum, which has resemblances of the game Chess, though, and also borrowed a few - if not most of the - rules from it; but despite the name, it's not Chess.
First, I'd like to point out, these 'flaws' you mentioned has already been discussed and tested over and over, but let me answer them point by point.
Based on the layout of the board, the first move of player one is to move a pawn one space ahead to allow their bishop access to an hourglass on the next turn.
Player two does the same thing.
Player ones next move is to take the hourglass with their bishop.
Player two takes an hourglass with their bishop.
Player one then gets two actions. First action, they move the other pawn that is blocking the bishop from the other hourglass. Second action, they take the hourglass.
Player two does the same thing on their side of the board.
Player one now gets 3 actions. They move all 3 pawns in the middle up 2 spaces each. Player two does the same.
Player one then moves the very middle pawn up one space to take the hour glass, and will be in combat against player two on player twos turn.
The battle for the middle spot for the third hour glass will be taking up most of the time now.
Ok, aside from the pawn part, which is the most logical thing to do though, the opening for each game could be what I just describe, mainly because bishops are solely on light squares...
This opening you described is one of the most obvious ones, and believe me, there are plenty of others that are viable (or even more so) besides this. Explore.
Bishops: The reason behind the many times brought up "bishops are only on light squares" thing, is their mobility. Their purpose to easily capture (enemy) hourglasses was intended. As you can see, the Rook is no longer capable of sailing through the board, thus, the Queen has been taken out of the starting pieces (reason explained in one of the previous posts), so the bishops became your most agile pieces. There are other pieces you can also use to give a checkmate, and don't forget that your bishops, though can't move on dark squares (with the exception of a pawn promotion), they can cover a very wide range of the light ones, easily blocking the path of the opponent's King.
The other problem that happens when you have 2 bishops that occupy the same colour squares is that your opponent will never be threatened by them, as it is fairly easy to stay on the dark squares. In regular chess, you would end up stale mating if you had 2 bishops left and your king and your opponent only had his king. He would stay on the dark squares and would never get checked.
In this case, it's a clear loss for the player who has nothing else than his king. He could run around on the dark squares forever, but he won't accomplish anything with that. It's a different case if he has the chance to promote a pawn, of course, but people most often than not surrender at this point.
Also, if you start off as white, and the board remains as it is, you will have a clear advantage. If you get 2 hourglasses first, you get 3 actions on your next turn. Now for any average chess player, seeing 2-3 moves ahead is hard enough, but now you have to contend with your opponent taking 3 actions in one turn. So this is another good reason to reduce the amount of hourglasses. But also relocating them so they aren't taken over in the 2nd and 3rd turns.
And at least if they are reduced and moved to only row 5, if the bishops remain only on light squares, and that should be changed, the ends of row 5 have the hourglasses which will still be taken in 2 turns, but at least theres a chance they won't.
It's a common thought in classic chess too, that the white player always has an advantage. It's no different here. Really.
Hourglasses: Because even with the current setup, a match can take a quite lot of time if not played all at once, these things were meant to hasten up the process right from the start. Also, as it was pointed out earlier, (1) you can't move a single piece more than once per turn, (2) it's not always an advantage having 3-4 or more moves per turn, that you have all to make. But players will realize this soon enough.
Also, don't forget, that
attacking doesn't mean an auto capture !!! If you're lucky enough (and with a bit of good deckbuilding), you can wreak havoc in the opposing lines with a single pawn. Just keep in mind that a Knight can be as easily humiliated as a Pawn here. Ranked pieces have only movement and (small) deckbuilding advantages here.
As of right now, you'd be better off doing an elements checkers event, because this is hardly chess at all. The elements portion is still elements, so the chess portion should still be chess, but it isn't. Adding the hourglasses is fine, but how about using a real chess setup instead or the diana chess setup which is this
games would be considerably faster with a smaller board too
Well, you really don't have to play in the event if you don't want to. As I already said, there's a lot of nice classic chess games out there, and this one is ain't one of them.
The board stays. It's not as shiny as I wanted to be but it serves it's purpose. Also, it has been tested and approved.
-- There will be also an update in the rules too, because it's missing a few small things, still.
