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Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for November, 2024.
Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for November, 2024.
Makruk is conspicuously absent from that list.
But in a chess-variants contest I would avoid variants for which a large body of opening theory exists. Participants are likely to come from one of these backgrounds, and would then be hugely advantaged when they play those games against players from another background. Next to Xiangqi, Chess and Shogi, Makruk and Jiangi probably should be disqualified on that count too.
It does seem good to have variants in there that are reminiscent of all these major chess variants, though, so that (say) Shogi players cannot complain that all the games are too 'chess-like', etc. Chess960 would be OK, but if you already have that, orthodox Chess just seems 'more of the same'. Unfortunately there don't seem to be similar variants of Xiangqi and Shogi; in fact Xiangqi variants are hardly existent.
We could of course make up some slightly modified versions of these games, which would not have any popularity by themselves, but act as substitutes for the over-popular variants. E.g. Shogi with an extra Copper General in front of the King, promoting to an (8-fold) Knight, or Xiangqi where Elephants are allowed to cross the River. (To name a few "10-sec variants".)