New Variant: Strategic Crazyhouse

I enjoy Crazyhouse but it is an extremely tactical game with a huge emphasis placed on initiative where an extra tempo or two can lead to a crushing attack, finishing the game soon with checkmate. Even a small weakness like a square around the king and only protected by him, could lead to receive a checkmate if opponent has a handful of pieces in reserve to drop with continuous checks.

So with the intention of make Crazyhouse more similar to Chess, this means making a much more strategic game, but at the same time maintain a very high level in the tactical part, I think we could make a new variant of Crazyhouse adding three rules governing how the drops are made:
Rule 1: Pieces cannot be dropped with check or checkmate.
Rule 2: Pieces can be dropped only between the first and seventh ranks.
Rule 3: Pawns can be dropped only between the second and sixth ranks.

I played a lot of blitz games of this new variant vs Sjeng, a Crazyhouse engine, these games may illustrate what I try to mean with a much more strategic game, here are the games: http://strategiccrazyhouse.xyz/#games

What do you think people?

Does a pawn drop with check allowed?

Try asking ChessWhiz about this sort of thing since he plays all the cool unofficial variants.

Or try Shogi which has a similar offense/defense balance.

@duropo
Nop, Pawns cannot be dropped with check either

@4

I revised the rule to clarify the "pieces" and "pawns", remove checkmate since it is a check anyway, and remove the word "between" which would confuse whether the start and end is included or not.

Rule 1: A drop move with a check is illegal.
Rule 2: Pieces (not pawns) can only be dropped from first rank to seventh rank for white
and from 8th rank to second rank for black.
Rule 3: Pawns can only be dropped from 2nd rank to 6th rank for white
and from 7th rank to third rank for black.

Your clarifications are very good and I've added them to my page. Here in the forum we can't edit posts.

Thanks!

I just found that in lichess we can import games, so in my profile you can see some games that I played in this variant: lichess.org/@/castleII/import