I agree. Having no draws means the game is decided from the beginning, and this doesn't seem a good feature. A work-around would be to play it as a shuffle game, where equally many possible initial shuffles are winning as losing. But with perfect play the game then becomes a lottery., and you might as well flip a coin in cases that would otherwise be a draw, to decide who has won.
A popular game without draws is mini-Shogi. In case of repetition (which is not a perpetual check) gote wins. Because captured pieces are dropped back in play, a game doesn't naturally peter out to a dead draw like in Chess, so rules that in an unnatural way decide an equal position in one way or the other are not needed; positions where both players have insufficient material do not exist. (Even with a bare King you can in theory still win.) It seems that the initial position is a win for gote, though, and this is a bit unsatisfactory.
I agree. Having no draws means the game is decided from the beginning, and this doesn't seem a good feature. A work-around would be to play it as a shuffle game, where equally many possible initial shuffles are winning as losing. But with perfect play the game then becomes a lottery., and you might as well flip a coin in cases that would otherwise be a draw, to decide who has won.
A popular game without draws is mini-Shogi. In case of repetition (which is not a perpetual check) gote wins. Because captured pieces are dropped back in play, a game doesn't naturally peter out to a dead draw like in Chess, so rules that in an unnatural way decide an equal position in one way or the other are not needed; positions where both players have insufficient material do not exist. (Even with a bare King you can in theory still win.) It seems that the initial position is a win for gote, though, and this is a bit unsatisfactory.