Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Indeed anti-trading rules would seem useless for such games.

People have tried playing Chu Shogi with drops, but from what I heard this led to most of the board and pieces remaining completely untouched, with only activity in a small central corridor.

I'm guessing that's what happens when you use the drop rule with a game that wasn't designed for it. I'm attempting to solve this in Dai Seireigi by using the same forward bias found in regular Shogi.

Here's a prototype of what I have so far (You may need to view this comment by itself for the diagram to show, and some of the mnemonics are close approximations of the actual piece). Only the eight most valuable pieces are not subject to this forward bias, and the Falcon and Eagle (promoted Horse and Dragon) will be subject to it as well.

The promotions are not included, as I haven't sorted that out yet, except that the King, Lion, and Queen do not promote, pieces found in normal Seireigi promote as they do in that game, and that I plan on adding Korean-style hopping move (without restrictions on what it can do) for a few of these promotions.

This looks good. You could remove the Side Movers as they make the game too defensive, and the Coppers that promote to them at the same time. Lances that promote to Great Tigers cover at least the same movement capability as Side Movers.

Knights could move to where the Coppers are, allowing them to move freely in the opening.

The Drunk Elephant could also be removed as its promotion to Crown Prince would drag the game out needlessly.

A defender is needed for the second pawn (in particular) and second-to-last pawn. The Dragon Horse can capture and promote without being captured otherwise.

This looks good. You could remove the Side Movers as they make the game too defensive, and the Coppers that promote to them at the same time. Lances that promote to Great Tigers cover at least the same movement capability as Side Movers.

The majority of the promotions won't be the same as in Chu Shogi, and this includes the Copper Generals, which would promote to a Silver General that can also jump to the second square orthogonally sideways or forward, or diagonally forward.

As it is now, the Side and Vertical movers can't move backward at all to try and ensure that they don't add too much to defense, but the sideways slide of the side movers may indeed be a problem. The question now is, what to replace them with?

The Drunk Elephant could also be removed as its promotion to Crown Prince would drag the game out needlessly.

I wasn't planning on having a piece that promoted to another royal, I can simply have the elephant (or its equivalent) not promote to begin with or make its promotion non-royal.

Knights could move to where the Coppers are, allowing them to move freely in the opening.

There is a defender (the Donkey). It works together with the Knight to protect the outer pawns from a distance, hence why the Knight is placed where it is. Like the current Side and Vertical Movers, the Donkey one of the pieces with no match in the Mnemonic piece directory for its Dai Seireigi move, and instead is being approximated, hence why you didn't see it initially.

The link section should mention that Chu Shogi is playable on https://lishogi.org now as well.

The repetition rule is a modern contamination by Xiangqi. In the historic rules repetition was forbidden, but it is likely that perpetual checking was forbidden even more: some of the historic mating problems would have fast parasitic solutions if you could force a win by perpetual checking. It is also not clear whether repetition of positions was strictly forbidden, or making the same move from an earlier occurring position was.

The baring rule is also a modern invention; there is no historic evidence that it existed in the Edo period.

When I first saw this game, I didn't think much of it, since I was more focused on larger Shogi variants, especially Tenjiku Shogi. However, now I have a few games against Jocly under my belt, and wow, this game completely blew me away. It is an absolute joy to play, despite its size and complexity (which melts away after a couple games). However, it is not flawless.

The Lion-trading rules are a bit complex, and making the Lion contagious (Like Maka Dai Dai Shogi's Deva, Dark Spirit, and their promoted forms) would make the rule much simpler while also achieving the same effect. However, this isn't really much of a problem, and may in fact be the better choice.

The real problem that I have with this game is that modern "innovations" have made the game more complicated than it needs to be. The repetition rules are quite complex, so much so that most computer programs for Chu Shogi that I know don't implement them, which is a trait borrowed from Xiangqi. The King Baring rule is completely unnecessary, as it does not add anything to the game that the combined effects of the other rules do not achieve. There is no evidence that it existed in the Edo period, so I'm not sure why someone thought it would be a good idea to mention this.

However, despite these problems, Chu Shogi is still easily among the best games of its kind. If you like Chess variants, you should give it a try.

Chu Seireigi is an attempt to combine elements of Chu Shogi with the ruleset of modern Shogi. It also has the benefit of not needing any special rules to preserve its quality, fixing all the problems with the modern "innovations" for Chu Shogi that I mentioned above. Players are disincentivized from trading off the most powerful pieces in many cases because they would just go into the player's hands, making them even more dangerous. The repetition rule is simply that of Shogi (draw, except perpetual check loses), and the drops make King-baring extremely rare. However, this comes with the unfortunate downside of having to remove all the multi-move abilities from the game, as otherwise the balancing would be thrown off.

As Gbtami realized it’s playable on Lishogi.