[ List Earliest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]
Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
The second Poor is for 8 piece-types. The first Poor is for name. A third Poor is in follow-up Comment about Whale Shogi dynamics in play. Mark, what are weird are CVPage's philosophy and practice of posting CV after CV that no one plays. For example, Joe Joyce says today he has not played Falcon King. In our view that negligence speaks for itself. Undisconcerted, I expect always to enjoy courteously reviewing(unlike prolificists themselves) any and all such games even hardly played, a practice 'we'(the Falcon team) started in 1992 with hundreds of patents before CVPage existed. Actually I welcome attacks because of mostly not respecting views of those mired in prolificist values(not referring to Mark Thompson who submits occasional well-thought-out CVs). Falcon Chess is the one CV out of 3000 in CVPage with far the greatest number of 'Poors', bar none, and has been for 7 years. We are used to personal attacks too, within 48 hours ''delusions of grandeur'' and ''really really weird.'' To contrary, unfortunate, pathetic is thus to react personally without analysis because of disagreeing about naming well-explained. Weird and shortsighted are indifference to projected loss 1/3 Earth's species within decades and really innocent statement of concern by noting oxymoronic name 'Whale Shogi'. The name as 'Poor' is represented not as my own but likely view of 'significant segment' noticing trends of ecological damage. What is Whale Shogi's following for its 'Darwinian test'? 10 Players? There is no positive 'Charles Darwin's test' for any CV yet, because none of them have significant adherents, not Glinski's Hexagonal, not Fischer Random Chess, not Omega Chess. A pittance is each one's followings compared to FIDE-type Chess (or Monopoly, Bridge, Scrabble, Rubik's Cube, crossword puzzle): no CV has been successful, bar none).
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.
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 ;-).
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:
If anyone knows of Japanese names for the other three I'll happily add them to the table.
| 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 |
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.
7 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.
Douglas Silfen has made a ZRF for Whale Shogi by R. Wayne Schmittberger, which also includes the variant from my [2005-04-01] Comment. Surviving for 26 years and producing offspring meets Charles Darwin's test of excellence.