Martian Shogi

Players
2 players, "chess age" and up.

Equipment
A four-color Icehouse set from Looney Labs These rules assume that the four colors used are red, yellow, green, and blue. Stacking pieces is not an issue in this game, so solid pieces may be used. Each player uses pieces of all four colors and all three sizes. The "owner" of a pieces is determined by the direction that the piece is pointing. Each player's pieces point away from the player. During the course of the game it is possible for a piece to be captured by the opponent and subsequently placed back on the board under the opponent's control.

A chess/checker board.

Object of the Game
To capture all of the opponent's Monarchs (large blue pieces).

Start of Game
Players sit at opposite sides of the board. The board is set up as shown in the diagram below. The pieces in the two rows closest to each player are oriented to point away from that player to show that that player initially controls them. The remaining 28 pyramids are placed in a common area off the board that is available to both players. To show that neither player owns any of these pyramids initially, they should be in this "global stash" standing upright. There are also two initially empty off-board "prisoner areas", one near each player, to hold the pieces captured by that player.

Initial Board Setup

Back row: Musketeer/Lancer/Bishop/Monarch/Monarch/Bishop/Lancer/Musketeer Second row: Squire/Vicar/Peasant/Pawn/Pawn/Peasant/Vicar/Squire

Turn
On a player's turn he has two options:

1. Move one of his pieces. The move that each piece can make is shown in the following table. An arrow (with some "shaft" to it) indicates that a piece may be moved as far as desired in the direction shown. An arrow head indicates that the piece may be moved only one square in the direction shown. (And, of course, the lack of any type of arrow pointing in a given direction means that the piece may not be moved in that direction.)

   	Red	Yellow	Green	Blue
   Large	General	Duke	Cardinal	Monarch
   Medium	Musketeer	Lancer	Bishop	Rook
   Small	Pawn	Peasant	Vicar	Squire

   
   
   For both single-space and longer moves...
   • A piece may not land on or pass over a piece owned by the same player.
   • A piece may not pass over a piece owned by the other player.
   • A piece may land on a square owned by an enemy piece. In such a case the enemy piece is "captured". It is moved from the board to the moving player's prisoner area. It is also turned to point away from the moving player to indicate that the moving player now owns that piece.
   • If a piece started a move in one of the six rows nearest the moving player and moves into the seventh or eighth row, the piece may be promoted:
     • The piece is moved from the board to the global stash. A piece of the same color and the next bigger size is moved from the global stash to the square where the piece was.
     • If there are no pieces of the next size up of the same color, then promotion is impossible and the piece must stay the size it is. (Be careful moving small pieces into the last two rows. If there are no mediums of the same color in the global stash, then the small will be stuck forever.)
     Note: A promotion can only be done to pieces moving into the last two rows, not within those rows. However, a piece may be promoted on one turn, "backed out of" the last two rows on the next turn, and then moved back into the last two rows and repromoted on the third.



2. 'Drop' a prisoner. A player may, instead of moving a piece already on the board, take a piece from his own prisoner area and place it (pointing away from him) on any vacant square on the board. If the piece is placed in the seventh or eighth row, it is not automatically promoted.

Winning the Game
If a player takes all of his opponent's Monarchs, the taking player wins.

Variations
The two trickiest parts of this game, especially for players of regular chess, are A)Promotions and B)Dropping. To make the game simpler, these two aspects of this game can be ignored. In fact it may be easier to learn the game by starting with a game at the "A Lot Easier" level and then one at the "A Little Easier" level before moving into playing full-blown games. For both of these variations, the victory condition remains the same as for the standard version of the game.

A Little Easier Remove the "Drop" option. However promotions are used as described in the main rules.

A Lot Easier: Remove the "Drop" turn option and the possibility of piece promotion. Since none of the small pieces can move backward in any direction, once they reach the far rank, they'll be stuck.

One Small Note
Yes, I know that in medieval times a Rook (using either the "bird" or the "cheat/scam artist definition) didn't get promoted to a Monarch. However I decided that it was more important to provide an easy way to remember the legal moves for a medium blue than to be historically accurate. In that same vein, it should be easy to remember the legal moves for Bishops and Monarchs (if you think of them as Queens) and, to a lesser extent, Pawns.

Revision History

Version	Date	Description
1.0	Nov 7, 2001	Initial Version
1.1	Nov 7, 2001	Changed the dual-named large blue from King and Queen to Monarch
1.2	Aug 10, 2004	Cleaned up some typos. Added ray-traced setup picture.

Credits
Initial Concept: Ryan McGuire
Name/Backstory/Theme: Ryan McGuire
Playtesting (so far): A BIG thanks to Harkius and Bajor Bhavael for their playtesting and suggestions. I'm STILL considering giving the Squire a single-square left or right move (like a Lancer with no backward movement) and possibly allowing Pawns to move two spaces on their first move. I'm holding off on these changes until the evidence in favor of either or both is overwelming. If you think that Squires are underpowered or that developing the center pieces is like swimming through molasses, please let me know.
Icehouse Pieces designed by:Andrew Looney
Other Icehouse Games designed by: Andrew and Kristin Looney, Jacob and John and Kory and Kristin, and many others
Comments and Suggestions are Welcome -- email Ryan