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Anime shogi variant?[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Garth Wallace wrote on Fri, May 29, 2015 09:38 PM UTC:
While researching something else, I ran across this discussion of
"Gungi", a board game that appears in the anime Hunter x Hunter and
figures in the plot:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=117295

It's apparently a chess variant with drops and pieces that may be stacked,
likely inspired by shogi. The thread is about trying to figure out the
rules from examples of play in the series (since the creator has never set
them out explicitly). Somebody posted a link to a Tumblr post that presents
a translation of a rule set a Japanese individual has come up with:
http://hiromalo.tumblr.com/post/74510568781/rules-of-gungi . The rules are
a bit fiddly (pieces have different movement abilities based on where they
are placed in a stack, and many have special abilities) but it may be
playable.

Of course, it's not clear if those match the "official" rules in the
series, or even if such rules actually exist, since the writer may have
just been winging it with a vague idea of what sort of moves are possible.
I'm not familiar with the series myself.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, May 30, 2015 11:12 AM UTC:
It is not just "likely" inspiored by Shogi, th page explicitly says "The battle takes places on a 9x9 tile board. This is the same board as shogi, gungi’s chief inspiration."

(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Sun, May 31, 2015 02:40 AM UTC:

Why are the arrow, bronze, silver, gold using hiragana rather than the proper kanji of those stuff like in shogi? (In shogi, a pawn promoted to gold general uses the same hiragana mentioned there, but gungi has no promotion, just front/back. I also notice that all of the pieces that do have hiragana in gungi are the back side of the pawn, but I still think it might be better to use kanji there.)

For making the pieces, what you might do is make them one side black and one side white, and the front sides will have a border or something like that perhaps. Alternatively just make it like in shogi with all pieces the same color, and you might make the writing on the back side in red.


(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Mon, Jun 1, 2015 07:07 PM UTC:
  1. Can a piece subjected to mobile range expansion effect move by the actual tier as well as the one above, or only one above?
  2. Can a tier 3 piece have any effect when subjected to mobile range expansion effect?
  3. Can two mobile range expansion effects applied together and result a tier 1 piece to act by tier 3?

Garth Wallace wrote on Mon, Jun 1, 2015 10:16 PM UTC:
I said "likely inspired by shogi" regarding the game that appears in the
series. The tumblr post says specifically that it's inspired by shogi, but
those aren't actually the words of the series creator; that post is a
hypothetical reconstruction of the game by fans, based on examples from the
series. Who knows if it's really what the series creator intended? I'm
just hedging though. It does sound like the game as played in the series
has drops, which would be a pretty strong indication. 

I suspect the tumblr post is just using graphics from the Japanese post
it's translating. As for why the hiragana, no idea.

1. The way it's phrased, it's ambiguous. But I think it's not additive.
Look at the move of the arrow: the tier 3 move is the combination of the
tier 1 and tier 2 moves, so if mobile range expansion *added* the move from
the next tier up, then that would mean the tier 1 arrow would move like a
tier *3* arrow. I don't think that's intended. On the other hand, this
would mean that the "range expansion effect" actually reduces range for
some pieces, like the lance.

2. It's not stated expliclty, but I would assume that tier 3 pieces under
mobile range expansion would just act like tier 3 pieces, since there is no
tier 4: they can't go up any higher. The only other possible
interpretation is that they become immobile (since tier 4 moves don't
exist) which seems unlikely if friendly fortresses are meant to be
advantageous.

3. Good question.

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