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This is nearing completion. One complication is that this game has descending ranks, while Game Courier and the Diagram Designer have been using ascending ranks. Both methods are perfectly logical ways of handling ranks for hexagonal variants, and the choice between them is arbitrary. So, I want to add support for using descending ranks to represent hexagonal boards.

[Editor's Note: This was moved from a submission page Max asked to be deleted. He had previously claimed that Shafran's Hexagonal Chess was unplayable, and H. G. Muller had asked him why.]

When you play 1.e5 in Shafran's chess, after black's response you can move your bishop to e2 and then attack both black rooks simultaneously. This leads to forced defensive progressions like b5 and h8 (the black knight won't work due to a3). It's roughly like playing 1.e4 a6 and h6 in orthodox chess. After that, you may want to move like a3 or h8, and after exchanges end up with an open vertical. Note that your rooks will be safe since the black bishop cannot attack them both at the same time. I didn't calculate the sequences where rooks will leave their positions, but I guess it would be challenging for black to keep his rook from being attacked by white minor pieces.

Mirrored response (1.e5 e6) would be devastating for black since after exchanges white queen will start destroying black by capturing on h9. You cannot respond the same way due to check sequences.

I am not a Shogi player so I cannot make any assumptions, but I guess it's more different from hexagonal chess.

[Editor's Note: This was moved from the same page as the previous comment.]

The first written introduction that was widely available for Shafran's chess was published in a Soviet paper named 'Nauka i Zhizn', (Science and Life), and was aimed at young auditory, where you were suggested to construct your own board. I don't own a copy of it, but I found the issue copy in a local library where the article about this variant first appeared. I learned about the article through the Web and I don't remember the issue number though, but it can be found.

Soviet chess player and writer Evgeny Gik showcased both Glinski and Shafran's hexagonal variants in one of his books on mathematical games.

In the Soviet Union, inventions of such fundamental kinds that can be used in propagandistic ways would usually get way more attention than in Western countries, especially due to the extreme popularity of chess in that period, even before Wladyslaw Glinski introduced his game to the general public in the seventies, in which case the promotion of almost the same game by the Soviets could be regarded as a copyright violation. I don't have any information that high-level chess players were interested in this variant, which in my opinion is unusual. I suppose to think they didn't react because this variant was flawed.

[Editor's Note: This was moved from the same page as the previous comment.]

When you play 1.e5 in Shafran's chess, after black's response you can move your bishop to e2 and then attack both black rooks simultaneously. This leads to forced defensive progressions like b5 and h8 (the black knight won't work due to a3). It's roughly like playing 1.e4 a6 and h6 in orthodox chess. After that, you may want to move like a3 or h8, and after exchanges end up with an open vertical.

I don't think b4 and h8 are similar to a6 and h6 in orthodox Chess: these moves open a ray for the Rook, and increase mobility a lot, while the latter even reduce the number of moves. I don't see any forced gain of material here yet, although it is clear that this deserves some investigation. But even if a positional advantage can be forced by white here, calling the variant 'unplayable' because of that is a bit like equating having to shelter in a celler while a rain of rockets reduces the city above you to rubble to the discomfort of having a mosquito in your bedroom...

Nevertheless, I think your remark on this weakness deserves to be mentiones in the Shafran's Hexagonal Chess article.