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

This page is written by the game's inventor, (zzo38) A. Black.

Shogi of the Central Madness

Pieces

It is played with same pieces of Shogi, but you also need a d10 (ten-sided dice) and a deck of cards with four of each number 1 to 10 (or 0 to 9). The zero and ten is considered the same, since some dice has 0-9 and some might have 1-10.

The board has compass directions. North is toward the first player and south is toward the second player.

Rules

This game follows rules of Shogi except as follows:
  1. At the beginning of the game, mix the cards, each player picks up one card. You are not allowed to look at your opponent's cards.
  2. At the beginning of a turn in which there is one of your pieces in the center square of the board, you must either play your card or roll the dice, which makes a madness effect, and then you can make your normal move.
  3. If you played the card, it is treated the same as if that number is the number on the dice. Discard your card to the face-up discard pile and then pick up another card from the face-down draw pile. If there is no more left, mix the discards to make a new draw pile and then pick up a card.
  4. According to the number on the dice, perform the madness action: 1 to 8 means east,southeast,south,southwest,west,northwest,north,northeast. Move the piece as far as possible in that direction (as if it is like a queen in chess), it stops when it captures an opponent's piece or stops at the edge of the board or when one of your own pieces blocks it. If it captures opponent's king in this way, you win. If moving into promotion zone, you may promote. If it is 9, you flip over the piece so that it promotes/unpromotes. If 0 or 10, remove it from the board so that you can drop it later (and it unpromotes). If you remove your own king in this way, you lose.
  5. After the mad move you can still make a normal move. But, a piece that has moved or flipped due to mad effect cannot be moved again on the same turn (you are still allowed to move it if the mad effect has failed). You are also not allowed to drop a piece on the same turn as effect 0 or 10.
  6. It is permitted to cause doubled pawns by mad effects (you still cannot drop pawns in a column with doubled pawns or with a single pawn).


This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.


By (zzo38) A. Black.
Web page created: 2011-01-17. Web page last updated: 2012-09-13