Rated Comments

But with shuffle.

With shuffle.

How about switching Diamonds & Onyxes? or Onyxes with Lame Ducks? That'll make Onyxes easier to bring to long diagonals.

Since it's the featured variant for this month, here's Glinski's HC:

But with shuffle.

When I go to any person information page and try to view game reviews, it says "$forpersonid is an unexpected variable and was not given a value".

For this Fairy piece there is a forced mate (K+FP vs k) in 125 moves: rWbrFfDlfflNlA

Can anyone create a piece that can force a checkmate in more moves?

It would be an interesting challenge for someone to make an Interactive Diagram for this variant.

Pushing does appear in other games, of course (a couple of pieces in my own Zwangkrieg do it), but I don't think I've ever seen the idea applied as uniformly as this, nor explained as neatly, clearly, and elegantly. It makes me wish that there was a simple code one could add into XBetza for doing it.

This looks like a good idea but I am not so sure of its practicality. The board might end up very crowded and we need to see a game simulation before deciding on its "greatness". 

The 4 stars are only for the name. I like the idea of using Cleopatra as a seducing piece.

I had this idea of making pieces switch sides for a long time, but I always thought that the person in charge of finances could do this job, which is more realistic. 

K+2B can only draw.

Hi Rose. I like this game! I have one question though. You said, "Queens have the movement options of both rooks and bishops" — I cannot quite understand that, as a Bishop (in this game) cannot access any square that a rook cannot. Could you please clarify? Thanks :-)

KNS is about 11 Pawn.

I had the same idea yesterday, glad to know I am not alone. What about en passant? If introduced, it should be applied "from behind", so e.g. after c4, white could capture its c4 pawn moving b2 or d2 to c3.

Here's an example:

Smess

But with shuffle & Ninny can promotes to Brain.

Lovely

Macadamia Shogi is, by a hefty margin, my favourite Shogi variant of the larger boards to date. Maka Dai Dai was previously the most enjoyable to me, but 400 moves later I'm stil in the middle game and it feels more like committing to a project than playing a game. Macadamia Shogi really helps alleviate this without detracting too much from the main points of appeal of Maka Dai Dai in my opinion. My heartfelt thanks to H. G. Muller for assembling this variant!

I also root for his success with the C localserver project if it still considered in the pipeline.

Admittedly, the main purpose for my comment to this page though would actually be to raise awareness--if it weren't already known--that the kanji character piece set for the js board on this website has sadly seemed to have broken partially, as a few of the pieces may be missing links now, or at least otherwise aren't loading on multiple browsers I've tested with. I was hoping that these could be potentially restored, as they were a much preferred visual setting.

Anyway, thanks again for all the hard work you've done for chess variants and the like, and I wish you good luck with the future endeavours!!

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 completely flawless.

Some rules, such as the King Baring rule (Uses Shatranj version, K+G vs. K is mentioned in historical sources) and repetition rules (borrowed from Xiangqi) that are currently played by are modern contaminations from other games and/or are warped versions of things mentioned in the historical documents, but I am willing to include these two rules, as they help with decisiveness without being redundant or overly complicated.

However, I am not willing to play by the "Okazaki" rule, and I would never recommend using it, which allows recapture of a Lion after another Lion has just been captured, if said Lion is unprotected. There is no evidence that it was a part of the historical game, and it kind of defeats the purpose of the rule against indirect Lion trading, so why did someone think it would be a good idea to have this? All it does is add confusion and increases the chance of a simplified game, detracting from the playerr experience.

It is also not clear whether a Lion taking a Pawn/Go Between and then a Lion is allowed if the enemy Lion is undefended after taking the Pawn. Both sides have evidence arguing for them (the hidden protector example for yes, a tsumeshogi in Dr. Eric Silverman's Chu Shogi Part II article, explained in the An interesting quirk in the Lion-trading rules section, for no). Personally, I prefer that is is allowed, since no recapture is possible after the move, and there is no specific mention of this situation in the historic rules.

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.

Addendum - An attempt at a drops-playable Chu Shogi variant

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.

Which direction should the Knights face OTB? Away from the player or leftward?

Xook.

Out of all the pieces Rook is the only piece thats consistent
Pawns have different captures
"Elephants" are either Alfils or Bishops or Silvers or Dabbabas or Alibabas
Knights have the same types of moves but they vary on how it moves (lame, 2 forwardmost only, etc.)
King is almost consistent
Unless if you believe what Johannes Kohtz suggested. He suggested that the earliest move of the Ratha is it jumps 2 squares orthogonally (Dabbaba)