Tweaking an ancient game: Ur

As part of an assignment, I need to tweak the mechanics of an ancient game of my choosing. for 

this, i have chosen the Royal Game of Ur, as I have the most background knowledge for it.

There was a variety of different routes I chose initially. Whilst i had considered making changes 

to the board itself, i felt that wouldn't change the game for the better. 

One of the idea that cam to mind was to change the nature of the 'safe' squares, so two player pieces (of the same team) can land on it, as well as having the ability to ‘block’ the route for the opposition, similar to the Egyptian game ‘Senet’.

Another change that was considered was to allow the players to allocate their moves to each and any of their pieces.  But this effectively destroyed the game by creating too may variations which made the game less frustratingly long, lessening the tension of the game.

This method was to modify the binary die so for every blank result the opponent can move their piece instead of staying stationary. Whilst this is an interesting idea, the problem with this is that it caused turns made the turn taking more confusing, making everyone to lose track of whose turn follows.

One tweak that as my attention is another change to the binary die, where this time players role the dice multiple times. But for every blank result, it is removed from the subsequent roll. For example, if the player rolls 4 dice and one is a blank, this is removed from their next roll in their turn, so they can only roll three on their next move. This would continue on until the player has run out of dice, and the turn will end. When the player's turn begins again, the player will have four dice once more. This modification gives the opponent an advantage which 'rolls over' to their next move, which they can use as part of their strategy.  This tends to speed the game up for an experienced player if his opponent is a novice.