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Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
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.