Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I left the King unpromoted for two reasons.  One was the notorious
difficulty of checkmating more mobile royal pieces.  The other was the
influence of Shogi itself, where the King is one of just two pieces that
cannot promote.

But there are potentials for promoting the King, and a case could be made
that if it survives to get out 7 ranks it deserves to be harder to kill
:)

I'm not sure a King should be promoted.  If it gets out seven ranks, I'd
assume one of two things is going on:

It's getting chased all over the board by the opponent.  The opponent
probably deserves to win, so why make it harder?

It's advancing despite the best the opponent can do.  Why are you fooling
around with your King?  Put that effort into mating or gaining a winning
material advantage.

I really like this game. If a King promotion is desired, perhaps a mW2F2cK
allowing more mobitity with the stipulation that the 2-square move
couldn't cross check (like castling).  This would be worth having as the
promoted King could get out of a dangerous position quicker, but most
mating positions would still be the same.

Let's take a look at promotions:

Knight is a two atom piece that promotes to a five atom piece--this is the
strongest promotion and a good thing -- the 9x9 board weakens the Kinght
vs the Bishop and the stronger promotion rebalances the eqaution.

Bishop is a two atom piece that promotes to a four atom piece, as is the
Camel; the Rook is a three atom piece that promotes to a five atom piece. 
These promotions are of appoximately equal value.

The Silver (FfW) is worth maybe 1 1/3 or so atoms and promotes to a three
atom piece, clearly a a bigger gain than Bishop, Rook, or Camel,  but a
lessar gain than Knight.

The Pawn is harder to evaluate -- it can promote in two steps vs five in
FIDE but does not promote to a decisive piece, so FIDE's 2/3 atom is
probably a good guess.  The Gold (WfF) is worth 1 2/3 atoms, so this is
the weakest promotion--but Pawn promotions collectively can add a lot of
power.

9x9 fits both Knight and Camel, and the promotion rule is a nice
way to allow Marshals and Januses (Jani?) without having to start with
blockbuster armies.
(I like the Janus more than the Marshal, so if that idea had occured to
me, I would have decided
promoted Rook = Rook + Bishop = Queen
promoted Bishop = Bishop + Knight = Janus
promoted Knight = Knight + Camel = Wildebeest
promoted Camel = Camel + Silver = augmented Omega Wizard
well... promoted Pawn = Gold, and promoted Silver = Silver + promoted Pawn
= Commoner)

It seems this game will find a bracket before I enter the PBEM design and
play!