I would love to see this form of chess on lichess. I think it would be a great way to have fun and practice endgames.
Endgame Chess (or The Pawns Game): Players start the game with only pawns and a king. Normal en passant, check, checkmate and pawn promotion rules apply.
This would be great!
Nice and easy to set up too - maybe it could be played in the variants team?
Maybe we could have games with "odds"? When you propose a game, you could propose a starting position with certain pieces/pawns removed. A stronger player could start with one less pawn, for instance.
However, the more variants there are, the more fragmentation of the Lichess userbase there will be...
You can already do this when you start a game from position.
Over the years I have taught a number of beginner players chess, and I have always had them play some games with King and pawns only. As pawns are so important pawn play training just makes sense. Its funny...In a former life on Lichess I suggested this and was ridiculed for it . Ask any master and they will tell you that mastering the end game must be done if you want to be a master. If you don't play with the end game in mind...then you just might lose in the end. Its also how you don't win your "won games" due to poor end game ability.
yes, you can already do it using "from position". But you'd hardly find any opponent other than the engine.
I think it is worth considering it as a supported variant with it's own rating because it's "real chess" :-) and a highly valuable training game. I bet some of the regular lichess streamers would love it once in a while as well - it can be so instructive.
Having said that - I agree that hundreds of variants may cause user base fragmentation.
And it would probably be hard to identify cheaters.
Since it's so easy to implement - how about giving it a try as something like "Variant of the Month"?
"Variant of the Month" is a brilliant idea, and would probably popularise any variant.
A month is quite long though - could "Variant of the Week" would be more suitable?