Shikaar

Shikaar means "Hunt" in Hindi. Indeed, the object of the game is to hunt down the enemy king. I got the idea of Shikaar from Chaturanga. I thought,"Why not make a variant about India showing more than just war." I experimented with different ideas and dicided on Shikar.

Setup

Shikaar is played on a 9x9 board, but without the top left-hand and bottom right-hand squares. The following table shows the abbreviations for the pieces: K=king A=advisor S=sage M=merchant E=elephant H=horse P=soldier This is the FEN for the starting position: emaksme1/1h5h1/ppppppp/9/9/9/PPPPPPP/1H5H1/1EMAKAME

Pieces

Each side gets 16 pieces: one king, one advisor, one sage, two merchants, two elephants, two horses, and seven soldiers. The soldier moves like a pawn in Cghaturanga. When it reaches the back rank, it can promote to any piece except a king. The horse moves like an orthodox knight. The elephant moves upto two squares diagonally and can jump over pieces. The merchant moves like an orthodox rook. The sage moves like an orthodox queen, but does not capture. Instead, it freezes any enemy piece that it faces across a rank, file, or diagonal. The advisor moves one square orthoganally and captures one square diagonally. The king moves like an orthodox king.

Rules

There are two ways to win the game. 1)Capturing the opponent's king. or 2)Stalmating the opponent. There is no castling or en passant captures.

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Web page created: 2005-05-12. Web page last updated: 2005-05-12