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Whale Shogi is a game information page. It is categorized as: Two dimensional, Small board, Oriental, ShogiBased.

Whale Shogi. Shogi variant. (6x6, Cells: 36)

Author: Hans L. Bodlaender. Inventor: R. Wayne Schmittberger.

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The board used for this game has 6 row(s), 6 column(s), 36 cells/squares.
This game is a 2 player game.
Invented in the year 1981. [1980-1982]. [1976-1986].

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Group ID 'WhaleShogi'

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Credits

Author: Hans L. Bodlaender. Inventor: R. Wayne Schmittberger.

Comments

Whale Shogi. Shogi variant. (6x6, Cells: 36)

Julian wrote on Mon, Mar 30, 2015 03:44 PM EDT:Excellent ★★★★★

I noticed that it could be played with a regular shogi set, with the pawns representing dolphins, the bishop representing the gray whale, a horse representing the narwhal, a gold general representing the humpback, a silver general representing the blue whale, the rook representing the porpoise, and the promoted rook representing the killer whale.

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Oct 11, 2010 01:53 AM EDT:

It struck me when I first saw this variant that theming a Shogi variant on whales was rather tasteless, for the reasons given by george Duke in previous comments. Even looking beyond that I feel that whales, as huge animals that travel still huger distances over the oceans, do not make a particularly good theme for a small variant full of short-range pieces. The game might have been far better received without the whale theme, and all the pieces have other names in other context. The Dolphin, Killer Whale, and White Whale are long-established standard Shogi pieces, and if their Japanese names are not to your taste my Man and Beast 01: Constitutional Characters suggests simpler English names for them. The rest have names in Man and Beast 12: Alternative Fronts and some also have Japanese names in large Shogi variants:

Whale Shogi name	Man and Beast name	Japanese name
Blue Whale	Coppergeneral	Dosho (Copper General)
Dolphin	Point	Fuhyo (Foot Soldier)
Grey Whale	Hunter
Humpback	Silvercoward	Old Monkey
Killer Whale	Chatelaine	Ryuo (Dragon King)
Narwhal	Snail
Porpoise	Wazirfiler
White Whale	King	varies between players

If anyone knows of Japanese names for the other three I'll happily add them to the table.

(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Sun, Oct 10, 2010 04:32 PM EDT:

Is possible to list kanji of pieces?

Anonymous wrote on Sat, Oct 9, 2010 03:48 PM EDT:Excellent ★★★★★

Wow, there are a lot of people hating Whale Shogi.  I for one like my chess
variants nice and complex, and 8 piece types (which are not really that
hard to learn) is a good balance, rather like Tori Shogi, which I am also a
fan of.  The divergent pieces are certainly easier to keep track of than,
say, the pieces in Chu Shogi, Tenjiku Shogi, and definitely Taikyoku
Shogi.

Anyways, on a random note, the Porpoise/Killer Whale duality is a new,
interesting idea I haven't seen anywhere else.  Because you have to
consider in Shogi variants what your opponent will gain as well as what you
will lose, I have found the Porpoise's value to be about equal to that of
the Grey Whale.

Oh, and by the way, I am also a fan of Outback Chess ;-).

George Duke wrote on Fri, Nov 16, 2007 02:54 PM EST:

What a bad game, as for playing by the spatially-challenged! (There are people, otherwise functioning individuals, who have difficulty with Knight move and even can never get it right) So many random, divergent piece moves to keep track of on little 36 squares. Really pathetic, not worth full analysis intended after all, inconsequential. Reminding one of later Outback Chess because of the number of unintuitive move definitions, Whale Shogi hodgepodge of one-steppers has some historical value as far afield as that Outback. We did not bother to find the vague ''offspring'' referred to by David Paulowich as our usual conscientious practice. Who knows what he is talking about(our expertise emphasizes 64+), but whatever derived from Whale Shogi is by name and definition an improvement.

Number of ratings: 14, Average rating: Good, Number of comments: 32

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First Created: Friday, August 30th, 1996
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File Timestamp: Wed, 14 Jul 2021 17:37:29 -0400
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