Queens, rooks and bishops would only "blow up" the lines to the first piece on that line - since they can't jump over pieces on a regular move, neither would the explosions. Therefore, only 8 pieces (plus captured and capturing) could possibly be blown up by one move, which is no more than currently possible.

How about atomic chess in which instead of all adjacent pieces being "blown up", all pieces that would be a legal move for the capturing piece from where it captured would be blown up. So if a knight captured a piece, any piece of either colour (pawns excluded) that was a legal knight move away from the captured piece would be blown up.

Problems? Suggestions?

if there were 4 per side, where would they be placed?

Not too long ago i came up with (as far as I know) a new chess variant. If anyone could comment upon it (why it doesn't work, improvements, problems, etc) it would be appreciated.

It has the same set-up and rules as regular chess, except each player has a row of 8 checkers in front of his or her pawns. The checkers move and capture like ordinary checkers except there are no forced captures (including jumps) and there are no double jumps (well, there could be but it would be very difficult to find check if a triple jump captured the king ;-) )

The only possible problem i found was it can get kind of crowded, but i don't think that has to be a bad thing.

And also - i'm assuming the anti-king can not be captured?

So you can win by either checkmating your opponent's king (like regular chess), or disallowing your opponent to have his anti-king threatened?