If anyone is interested in the relative merits of an enormous number of chess variants, check out:

www.chessvariants.com

(sorry, not exactly sure how to include a link in the text). Literally thousands and thousands of variants, divided nicely up into categories such as large board variants (gothic, janus, grand, and Mr. Trice's favorite, omega, among them), small board, etc, including "officially recognized variants" (gothic is among them! Yeehaw!) and variants that do not use what we could consider the standard board and pieces (i.e. many of the Asian games). The site also includes links to any official webpages of federations official and unoffical, and an occasional game engine against which you can try the variant out. Good for hours of mind-numbing rules permutations.