Thanks for your patience. No, we can't send files via PMs. I will send you a link for sharing. If you ever want, you can give me your email address. But since I know you might not be comfortable with that, we can just go this route for now. I'm glad you're saving the different versions. I think that is wise. Unfortunately I did not do the same. I will send what I have, and you can simply copy it to yours.

I did remove the duplicate gold/lion for now. I think you are right about the gold and silver differences, with the advantage of the silver being able to retreat more quickly. Believe it or not, I originally had the iron/silver piece as a silver/gold, but as the silver was supposed to be weaker in regular shogi, yet such was not so clear in this version, and since I was trying to make the weaker face more forward oriented, I changed it to iron/silver. Perhaps you are right....

No, I really want to keep the silver's retreat options early in the new setup. I'm not sure if one is truly more valuable than the other, or if they are simply more valuable in different circumstances.

Still thinking I should leave the lion out for now, and maybe later see about adding it in. The new set up still requires 30 cells. I slightly adjusted the middle and rear pieces. Everything is given some movement, and depending on what strategy a person is going for, slight repositioning could allow pieces in back to move to the fore more easily. But it depends on which pieces you really want to get out, as different repositioning would be more helpful to other pieces.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. PM coming your way soon.