New game needs help

[Kistaro Windrider <kistaro@...>]

So I've perhaps started to maybe come up with a new Piecepack game,
but the rules I have just don't work. I need advice on what to do to
make this workable, if anything can be done.

The general gist of what I have right now:
1. Set up a board of 20 tiles: a 4x4 square, and then one at the
middle of each edge (offset realtive to the othe tirles). All of these
are face-down (grid-up).
2. Each person choses a side and a suit. The pawn of that suit is
placed somewhere in the single tile outside of the square, while all
the coins are placed, suit-side up, with a row of four in the center
of the closest row or column of the 4x4 square, pointing towards the
edge, and the other two in the next row up, in the center, pointing
towards the center. Direction is highly relevant in this game.
3. Each die is set at 3.

4. The goal of the game is to destroy your opponent's laser by zapping
it with your own.
5. On each player's turn:
 a. That player decrements his or her die if it is not already at the
ace. (3 becomes 2, 2 becomes 1.)
 b. That player moves one coin. The current move mechanics are
Halma-style: one step orthogonally, or any number of jumps over
friendly or opponent pieces orthogonally with no captures. The coin
may be placed in any of the four directions when landing. A coin may
not be rotated in place.
c. If that player's die is at the ace, that player may optionally fire
his or her laser. He or she choses a direction for the beam to be
fired from his or her pawn. Whenever it hits a coin, the laser is
deflected to the direction the coin is pointing. If it hits a laser,
the owner of that laser (and don't shoot yourself!) is out of the
game. His or her laser is removed from the board, but the coins
remain. If the laser fires off the board, nothing happens. If an
infinite loop occurs, ALL coins involved in the loop are "vaporized"
and removed from the board.
In any event, after the laser is fired, that player's die is reset to 3.

So that's the rough draft of the rules I have. I've come up with a
wide and creative variety of deadlock configurations: ways to set up a
few pieces so one can never lose. You can't win in them either, but at
least you can't lose.

Problems:

1. The deadlock problem I mentioned.
2. The beginning of the game is very slow. Nothing interesting happens
for a while.
3. In many games, deadlocks occur before anything interesting happens at all.
4. If too many coins ("mirrors") are vaporized, the game deadlocks.
How should they get back on the board?
5. I'm certain there are more, but the previous four thwarted my
preliminary tests.

Anyway, I'm looking to y'all pros for advice. This is sort of a group
brainstorming session, if y'all would indulge me. Suggestions, please?

--Adam Norberg at his shiny new e-mail address