Minishogi Gold and Silver / 5五将棋 金銀

Minishogi Kingin (Gold&Silver)/ 5五将棋 金銀 

A variant of minishogi that was developed by me several years ago and officially recognized by the Japanese masters of the game in 2022 as one of the versions of minishogi on a 5x5 board.

'Minishogi Gold and Silver' is listed in the online encyclopedia of Shogi Variants on the site shogitter.com - the most extensive and authoritative site on Japanese chess variants.In addition to learning about the different variants of Shogi, this site also allows you to play them live, including this variant of minishogi on a 5x5 board, against a bot or other players.

The idea of ​​creating or rather improving the standard version of minishogi on a 5x5 board, which was invented by Shigenobu Kusumoto around 1970, came to me after playing countless games of this variant.

Anyone who has ever played minishogi on a 5x5 board using Kusumoto's rules knows that the opening stage of the game is straightforward and quite boring.The monotonous actions of the correct deployment of one’s forces on such a mini-board quickly becomes boring and, moreover, with correct and careful play any manifestation of initiative can be severely punished.

Attempts to improve or find an ideal game on a 5x5 board were made more than once, but they all resulted in the invention of games on boards of completely different sizes.

My task was to preserve the geometry of the 5x5 board, which is ideal, in a sense, for composing problems in classical Shogi - Tsume-Shogi, and where the number of striking combat units corresponds to the same classical Japanese chess.

As a result of long searches and experiments, I managed to achieve the ideal game architecture, which harmoniously fits into the 25 squares of the minishogi board and which almost completely preserves not only the concept of playing Shogi on such a small board, but, importantly, allows you to create in in the spirit of Tsume-shogi with an almost complete set of basic Japanese chess pieces.

Setup

The game is played on a 5x5 board.

At the beginning of the game, the player pieces are located along the first and fifth rows in the following order: Silver, Gold, King, Gold, Silver.

  ５ ４ ３ ２ １
+------------------+
| 銀 金 玉 金 銀|一
| ・ ・ ・ ・ ・|二
| ・ ・ ・ ・ ・|三
| ・ ・ ・ ・ ・|四
| 銀 金 玉 金 銀|五
+------------------+

Pieces

All pieces move in the same way as in Shogi.

Rules

The rules of 'Minishogi Gold and Silver' are exactly the same as those of regular minishogi on a 5x5 board, with the following exceptions:
- there are no pawns in the game
- each player has 1 king, 2 silver and 2 gold generals
- each player has 1 bishop and 1 rook in hand (in reserve)
- the player pieces are located along the first and fifth rows in the following order: Silver, Gold, King, Gold, Silver.

The game is played with exactly this set of pieces in the initial arrangement, which is the main difference from the minishogi of Shigenobu Kusumoto. It's easy to guess that this difference is precisely reflected in the name - 'Minishogi Gold and Silver'.

Notes

In such conditions, with such a balance of forces, it was possible to obtain a super-aggressive version of Shogi on a 5x5 board. The positions that arise in such a limited playing space seem so phantasmagorical and unreal that it is not possible to find something similar in other types of minishogi, and not only in variants on mini-boards.

However, the purpose of creating this variant was not at all to give the game acute dynamism or dizzying aggressive actions in the game. The main goal was to bring the gameplay as close as possible to some semblance of creating and solving Tsume compositions in real time, directly during the game. We can say that 'Minishogi Gold and Silver' is a variant for those who love and appreciate Tsume Shogi.

It would not be entirely correct to compare regular 5x5 minishogi with the 'Gold and Silver'. These are two completely different games in terms of tactics and strategy. Of course, the complexity of this version exceeds Kusumoto's idea many times over, but this was not the goal of improving 5x5 minishogi. The main message of 'Minishogi Gold and Silver' is to increase variety in the limited space of a 5x5 board and give the game the character of creating problems and studies - a chess composition, in our case Tsume Shogi, which reveals all the beauty of the combination game of Japanese chess. 

A description of the rules of the game and playing against a bot or other players can be found here:

https://shogitter.com/rule/5%E4%BA%94%E5%B0%86%E6%A3%8B%20%E9%87%91%E9%8A%80

Last revised by Вадря Покштя.