Single Comment

I'm only playing my second game of Shatranji, but I thought the elephants in the setup perhaps caused a bit of a problem for initial development, which even unmoved knights don't in shogi (for themselves and for lances there, as opposed to for the elephants and rooks in this game). I may have a hangup about not wanting to move my elephants initially to a rook's file in this game though, which may be an acceptable solution at times. Also, it's harder to pick off an undeveloped elephant than an undeveloped shogi knight, in order to drop it somewhere with more flexibility for it, I'd imagine. Elephants also cannot promote in this game, unlike for shogi knights, as H.G. alluded to. In Shatranji (or straight Shatranj) only pawns can promote, and then to a lowly ferz rather than the gold-powers one acquires at promotion in shogi. That's an additional reason I'm thinking the idea of a 'Modern Shatranji' variant, based on Joe Joyce's Modern Shatranj (with pawns promoting to generals [aka guards]) might be even more interesting than Shatranji.