Ratings & Comments

Ever since I played a game with Greg that ended in an impasse, I felt this game may be too drawish, and I've sometimes considered changing the rules to fix this. The rule change I was thinking of was to forbid Kings from crossing to the other side of the board and to give them the ability to check each other from a distance, as in Eurasian Chess. However, it has come up that Shogi has its own rule for handling impasses, and there are alternatives to it.

The rule in Shogi is if each King has moved to the opponent's camp, which is the ranks the opponent's pieces start on, players may agree that an impasse has been reached and count pieces to determine the winner. Kings count for nothing, Rook and Bishops, promoted or not, each count 5, and other pieces each count 1. A player with less than 24 points loses. Because of the piece attrition in Kamikaze Mortal Shogi, it is possible that each side would have less than 24 points. So, instead, it could be played with the rule that whoever has more points wins. But I don't like this counting solution, and others don't too.

An alternative rule proposed for Shogi is called the Try rule. This involves winning by moving one's own King to the space the opponent's King began on. I don't know if this involves moving there only if it is safe or if it becomes a condition only after both Kings have crossed into the enemy camp. I would propose making it a winning condition only if both Kings have crossed into the opponent's camp and it moves there safely.

Similar to this is the Campmate rule, which allows a player to win by reaching the last rank with his King. I would propose the same conditions on it that I am proposing for the Try rule.

Another possibility for dealing with impasse is to reverse the directions that the opponent's pieces may move when the King moves into the opponent's camp. Additionally, pieces could be allowed to treat their own camp as a promotion zone when the opponent's King is there. These changes would discourage players from moving their Kings to the other side of the board without strictly forbidding it.

One more possibility is to allow Kings to check each other from a distance but to not forbid Kings from crossing to the other side. Instead, the ability of Kings to check each other from a distance would usually prevent both Kings from crossing to the other side, and if they happened to do so by having another piece between them on the same rank, this ability would provide an incentive for leaving the King more exposed.

The suggested changes to the summoning rule seem overly complicated to me. I would suggest instead making the summoned pieces switch sides when captured, like shogi pieces. Then the players would want to be careful about losing the demon, since that would allow the opponent to summon it later. If you want losing a summoner to be more consequential, a captured demon could only switch sides if the capturing player still has the right piece to summon it back.

Summoning looks really overpowered, and we’re trying to figure out if we can keep the mechanic without it ruining the game.

Some ideas:

• Summoning just puts a piece on the board once in the game, akin to Seirawan (Sharper) chess.
• My proposal to give the other player an extra move after a summoning is done.

I mentioned Zillions, but, of course, Fairy Max might be able to implement the summoning mechanic to playtest just what compensation we need to give the other player when invoked (unrestricted extra move, restricted extra move, etc.).