Microshogi is a Shogi variant played on a 4×5 board with hybrid pieces -- non-standard pairings of standard units: Bishop / Tokin Gold General / Rook Silver General / Lance Pawn / Knight King A piece is promoted (flipped) whenever it captures another piece. This is mandatory even when the flip side is a weaker unit. Also unlike 9×9 Shogi, captured pieces...
Yonin Shogi or Four-handed Shogi is a four-player variant of shogi invented in 1993 but published in its current form in 1995. The game is played using two subsets of standard shogi pieces and a standard 9x9 shogi board. Each of the four players gets one king, one rook, two gold generals, two silver generals, and three pawns. The players sit around the...
Billed as "The World's Smallest Shogi Variant," Nana Shogi is played on a 3x3 board with two identical sets of three pieces. Rules are similar to the parent game, Shogi, but some pieces are cubes that can be promoted through a cycle of four faces taken from several other Shogi variants. The Three Types of Pieces A conventional Shogi king An...
Inspired by Kyoto Shogi, Renge Shogi, designed by Michael Sandeman, is played on a 7x7 board. Each player has seven pieces, from left to right along the back rank: Silver, Pawn, Gold, King, Gold, Pawn, Silver. Whenever a piece moves (except the King), it alternately promotes and demotes: Silver - Lance Gold - Knight Left Pawn - Bishop Right Pawn - Rook As...
Bushi Shogi is a Shogi-inspired game played by two opponents on a field of two cells, with two pieces called Samurai. The pieces are cubes with kanji in red for 'samurai' and kanji in black for 'sword' on each face. The playing field starts empty. Each player receives one Samurai and, beginning with Black, drops them onto their respective cells in turn....