Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I don't know about you, but I create Chess variants as solutions to engineering problems. For Hex Shogi, the engineering problem was how to play Shogi on a hexagonal board. It is natural that a solution to this problem would share features with solutions to the similar problem of how to play Chess on a hexagonal board. The pieces shared between Hex Shogi and Glinki's or McCooey's Hexagonal Chess move the same because the solution to how these pieces should be adapted to a hexagonal board is an obvious and natural one. Although I think I knew of these variants when I created Hex Shogi, the similarity is due only to my recognition that the definitions of diagonal and orthogonal used in these games are the appropriate ones to use on a hexagonal board. Even if these games hadn't been invented, I could have easily come to this solution on my own. As for any similarity with Wellisch's Hexagonal Chess, none of it is due to any knowledge of the game, as I was ignorant of the game at the time. I only now just looked it up, and while there is a Java applet for it, there is no page on it. There are in fact only two ways the board could have been oriented. So it's not surprising that past hexagonal variants have already covered both ways. For whatever reason -- I don't remember exactly why now -- I preferred the horizontal orientation to the vertical. Notably, the horizontal orientation makes more sense for a three-player game, which is what Wellisch's is, and the even greater similarity that Wellisch's game has to my Three-Player Hex Shogi is due only to this. They resemble each other due to being solutions to similar problems, not to inheritance or to any historical connection.

With Storm the Ivory Tower, there is a historical connection between it and its antecedents. The engineering problem I had in mind for this game was how to combine Xiangqi with Smess, and because of this, these two games are literally the parents of my game. The similarities between this game and its antecedents are due mainly to inheritance. The differences are due mainly to engineering problems that could not be solved with a more straightforward combination of the two games.

While Smess (not counting the slightly different All the King's Men) was the only example of its kind, Glinski's and McCooey's games were not. I already knew of other hexagonal variants when I created Hex Shogi. Nor were they even the first I knew of. Before I even became involved with this site, a friend of mine created a three-player hexagonal version of Chess, which I started to play asynchronously with him and someone else before he lost interest in it. At best, Hex Shogi is a half-sibling to other hexagonal variants, because it is based on an idea that has also inspired these games. But it was not inspired directly by any of these games, and it was not designed as a combination of Shogi with any particular version of hexagonal Chess. So I would not describe it as a combination game in the same way I would Storm the Ivory Tower.

Okay, I've now remembered why Hex Shogi uses horizontally-aligned hexagons rather than vertically-aligned hexagons. Using horizontally-aligned hexagons modifies the movement of every piece in Shogi, whereas using vertically-aligned hexagons leaves the movement of some pieces unmodified, which creates a greater disparity in value between the pieces with additional powers of movement -- such as Rooks, Bishops, and Kings -- and those without, namely the Pawns, Lances, and Knights. Although I wasn't aware of it when I created Hex Shogi, George Dekle adapted Shogi to a vertically-aligned hexagonal board in 1986 and called his game Hexshogi. His is a more straightforward adaptation of Shogi to a hexagonal board, but I expect the weakness of the forward only pieces makes it more drawish than my game. In fact, it includes rules for counting pieces and declaring a winner when the game is at an 'impasse,' which I take as an indication that even the inventor found the game drawish.

Also, the use of the same board as Glinski, McCooey, and Wellish used is an afterthought. Hex Shogi was originally designed for a board with 41 spaces, and it is only after I had formulated the rules for the game that I selected some more suitable boards for playing it on.

Interesting synchronicity that this topic comes up right now. Am playing a game of Hex Shogi 91 now with Fergus and immediately started thinking about hexagonal shogi with vertically stacked hexagons for a very specific reason, which is almost the opposite of Fergus' reason for chosing the opposite orientation...

Going from squares to hexagons leads to more mobile pieces generally. With horizontally stacked hexes, and with the conventional mapping of orthogonal and diagonal moves, The Rook then travels in 6 directions and the Bishop in 6 (although the Bishop becomes colorbound to 1:3 of the board instead of 1:2 on a rectangular board.) The stepers also become more mobile. In Hex Shogi the Gold travels to 9 cells instead of 6, the Silver to 8 instead of 5, the Knight to 4 instead of 2. The Lance slides in 2 directions instead of 1. And, to me, the biggest difference is that pawns step in 2 directions instead of 1. Everything becomes more mobile, and therefore more powerful, hopefully maintaining the balance.

Given this, Fergus observes that with vertically stacked hexagons, not all pieces become more mobile. The Lance and the Pawn only travel in 1 direction instead of 2. Hence they get left behind in the mobility upgrade. Seems like a good reason for horizontal hexagons. (Also note the Silver moves to 7 instead of 8, Gold to 8 instead of 9; still an upgrade but not as large of one.)

Now when I looked at this, I thought that, with vertically stacked hexagons, the pawns stayed the same, which, not seeing the larger picture, I saw as advantageous. In Chess variants, the pawns are what to me is fundamental about Chess. In Shogi I wouldn't say the exact motion of the pawn is quite as fundamental to the nature of the game as in Chess, but it made sense to me to try to preserve the pawn.

So I quickly came up with a board and setup that seemed obvious to me. (see preset here). But now reading the comments I see mention of George Dekle Sr's HEXSHOGI, and looking in Pritchard's I see the almost identical board layout. (Very slight difference, board with 85 hexagons instead of 86, and bishops and rooks slid in one more.) And I've had Pritchard's Encyclopedia for seven or eight years, and flipped though it a lot, so I've probabaly seen this game and had it in my subconscious...

The biggest thing I notice with this arrangement, is that the Rook can no longer slide along the bank rank to protect the promotion zone. Instead, until pieces move out of the way, the Rook cannot move more than one space at a time! This I see as a definite drawback. I have a different vision, though, of how the Gold and Silver should move that makes them slightly weaker and also more reminicant of regular Shogi that should help to remedy the piece value problem that Fergus correctly identifies. (The Gold still moves to 8, and the Silver to 7, but the arrangement is different. Need to make a diagram...) But, yes, the Rook is made even more powerful compared to the rest of the pieces with the vertical stacking, and he was already pretty powerful.

Ok, I created a GC preset for GraTiA. It can be accessed here.

I thought I submitted it for publication; maybe it needs to be approved before it will appear.

I'm not sure about the knight's and camel's promoted forms. Can they be blocked after the first knight/camel leap or something akin to mao with a twist for the camel :)!

This interesting variant featured some pieces for which no XBetza notation existed. Namely a lame Slip-Rook and Slip-Bishop, sliding only an odd number of steps. I now made the diagram understand notations jnAA, with A a distant leaper atom, as a lame rider with the given basic leap, with an elongated first step.

As many pieces promote, and only in an (optional) predetermined way, I used Shogi-style promotion for this diagram. As a result the automatically generated piece list to the right of the diagram does not list all pieces; it only lists the unpromoted forms, and shows the correspondin promoted forms after a second click. The images used in the article's original diagram for Gryphon and Anchorite were not available in the 35x35 set I used for this diagram. I used the standard image for Gryphon and a Rhino instead. The article did not specify any pictograms for the promoted pieces that are not in the start position, so I improvised there.