Comments by ChessShogi

Atomic Chess is the featured variant for November 2024.

Home page still needs edited to reflect this, though. Not sure how to do that.

There's something wrong with the Chu Shogi diagram again.

I have made a new version of the Chu Shogi Applet using a custom-built script. The link to the Applet now points to the new page. The old Applet is still available at a new page, whose membergraphics directory includes the old Applet by itself.

It is definitely easy to get into. It inherits all the core rules from Chess while adding something new. Good work with this one.

The only thing I am on the fence about is the woodlander's move, which makes it more of a defensive piece. I think a Knight + vertical-only Rook (forward and backward) would be a much better combination here, and would also make it resemble Chu Shogi's Flying Stag while also being distinct from it.

Having too many defensive pieces will make a game quite drawish. Ideally, at least a majority, if not all, piece types in a game like this should be able to participate in an attack, especially in larger games. Chu Shogi solves this by having a broad promotion zone and making every piece except King, Lion, and Queen promotable, albeit to specific types.

It's a nice concept for sure, but the fact that the leapers are so weak and don't promote at all is killing me. (only Gold can mate by itself with help from the King, and it isn't even immediately available after dropping).

I suppose it could be a proof of concept for a future game of yours. A good idea would be to have the leapers be forward-only but have decently strong promotions, most of which are more mobile forward than backward, along with a piece significantly more powerful than the rest of the army. This is what Seireigi does with the standard Shogi set.

Well, as is, it's a well-designed game for sure, and worthy of approval.

I'd agree that the Quickpawn is easier to promote due to having more movement options than the standard Chess Pawn, but I think board size affects game length more so than decisiveness, which is more a function of.how powerful the army is compared to the royal piece (usually the King).

That's because I made a new one. You can find it at https://www.chessvariants.com/invention/chu-shogi-applet

The old applet has been moved to www.chessvariants.com/invention/old-chu-shogi-applet

Anything I can do to help? If we're at 90% space usage, that's basically a site emergency that all Senior Editors should get on top of.

Edit: 57% is much more reasonable. So it's no longer an emergency anymore.

Mayby the backup is covering everything on the site, not just public_html?

Chu Seireigi is my first serious attempt to make a Chu Shogi-like game playable with drops, but it is not as good as I thought when I first made it. There are too major problems the game runs into:

• Pieces that are too strong for use with drops - the drop rule is meant to be used for weak pieces, but Chu Seireigi's army has too many strong pieces for this to work well. In particular, there are too many ranged pieces, which, among other things, allows players to defend too easily.
• Too many pieces - in order for the drop rule to work there needs to be ample space for pieces to drop on. The armies in Chu Seireigi occupy more than half the board, and due to the strong piece problem, drops are often restricted to far fewer spaces than is optimal.

Despite these flaws, the game is still at least decent to me, since it is a first attempt. It is learnable and playable, even if its a bit drawish. Also, it was a real learning experience for crafting future games of a similar vein.

This one's fine. It's simple enough that you can readily guess an outcome despite the new rule change.

However, you still need a way to tell if a King has been mated once already, but this should be simple enough. I have added one such way to the rules.