Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

This game is played not by individuals, but by two competing monasteries,
deep in the Pazomian hills, where monks devote their lives to the study 
of Shogi and its variants. The first (and so far, the only) game was
started over 600 years ago, and each monastery has been making two moves a
year (with interruptions for crises such as famines and wars); one delivers
its moves on the equinoxes, the other, on the solstices. Books have been
written analyzing the status of the game; novices study the thinking of 
the players who have gone before them for years before their opinions are
sought for current moves. Most experts feel that they are nearly finished
with the opening now.

Anyway, it's a nice legend, I think. Course, I did make it up myself.

I somewhat doubt that George H. will sell sets for this one, since the
rules presented here contradict the rules he published for Tenjiku Shogi
at a couple of points.  First, under Hodges' rules, the ranging pieces
could not capture or leap over pieces higher in the heirarchy, while as
presented here the ranging pieces may not leap over higher pieces, but may
capture them.

Second, this document sort of re-ignites the Lion Hawk controversy. 
George Hodges' rules let the Lion Hawk leap to any square within two
spaces, but when Colin Adams published his book on the Tenjiku Shogi
opening, he noted that it made more sense if the Lion Hawk (a promoted
Lion), had full the full doublemoving Lion power.  This translation says

'The Lion Hawk, as in Tenjiku Shogi, may move like the Lion or leap to
any square which would be attacked by the Lion.'

'move like the Lion' is Colin Adams' interpretation, while 'leap to
any square which would be attacked by the Lion' is George Hodges...

i don't know that this game necessarily ignites any controversy for
previous games.  there are a lot of pieces in this that are different from
the pieces of the same name in other shogi variants, so nothing in this
game helps prove anything one way or another. <P>

i began making a set a couple years ago but i lost interest because of
uncertainties in the rules and because it seems to be mostly a collection
of pieces from other variants thrown together with little new.  <P>

A small omission in the description of the Running Horse, it should read:

'Running Horse		steps 1 backward orthogonal, leaps to the second backward
diagonal, slides forward orthogonal or forward diagonal'

My apologies but with a document of this size there are bound to be a few
errata.  Hopefully, they are few.

Some sources note that the ranging move in Taikyoku can involve the capture
of each and every piece, both friend and foe, which the ranging piece
leaps.

And believe it or not, there are a few individuals in Japan actually
attempting to play this game.

How come two pieces seem to have the exact same move?

Long-Nosed Goblin   diagonal hook-move
Capricorn   diagonal hook-move

Or are there lots of duplicates and I just haven't noticed since they're
hidden among the masses of different pieces?

Heh, I'd like to see a zillions implementation of this.

The basic difference between the Capricorn and the Long-Nosed Goblin is the
potential promotion.

The Capricorn promotes to the Hook Mover, an orthogonal hook-move piece
and more powerful piece as it is no longer bound to a diagonal pattern.

The Long-Nosed Goblin does not promote.

The promotion potential is what often differentiates pieces of similar
initial types of moves.  This allows for particular tactics during play,
obviously making the promote-able piece more desired than the
non-promote-able.

And this applies to pieces with similar initial moves which promote to
different potential promotions.

Here we go... This is the link to the 'big' version... Click on
Taikyoku.swf beneath the board to play on a smaller version if you need
to... Clicking (i think it's right click) on a piece will show you the
move set in the upper right of the board area... etc.. ENJOY!

http://taikyokushogi.hp.infoseek.co.jp/taikyoku.html

That's the bigger board.... AFAIK there's no AI though.... Or none that
I could find.... 

http://taikyokushogi.hp.infoseek.co.jp/taikyoku.swf

this is the smaller version...

ENJOY I SAY!

You see I intend to create a graphical set for the pieces. That way you could print out the pieces and mount them on cardboard or foamcore. Each piece would have its name at the bottom edge. a diagram in the middle. rank at the top and a small row beneath it for starting positions.

Tai Shogi is the original intended game but this seems so much more massive and amazing. Right now for ease of computer creation I've taken the images. Listed their english names beside them, starting locations and I'm trying to decode some of the strange diagrams.

I have a few questions.

the X by itself means its jumps directly to that position?

an x with an arrow. does that mean slide (or jump to space #)or slideing with jumps permitted?

the arrow with 3 lines through it?

treacherous Fox has arrows going through single step circles..??

if anybody can help this would make things easier.

big ole bob

A printer tested Piece design has been created.
With each piece being a maximum of 1 inch by 1 inch on playing squares of
1.5 x 1.5 that would make the playing field about 4.5 feet across even.
For such a small scale the pieces look verry similar to the diagrams seen
on this page. The exception is that they are situationed in the middle of
a shogi shaped piece which lists, rank (row), starting columns, american
translated name, an indicator for 'promoted' or not. and a quick to
identify indicator for 'king & crown princes' which included pieces
promoted to 'crown prince'. Basicly a 'capture me to win the game'
indicator thats easy to see on such a large board with so many pieces.

wikipedia has an arcticle on the same game at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi

This has been helpfull in verifying many of the confuseing moves.

only one confuseing question.
For range captureing pieces such as king & crown prince etc. Which
capture
all pieces they jump over both yours and opponents.

It is said they can only capture those of a lower ?rank?.
Rank is a term often used for a horizontal'row'.
is the row a piece placed on also its starting 'RANK'? in reguards to
this range captureing process?
There would be no need for this range captureing process to be notated in
a forward motion if it only reffers to range captureing in a backward
motion. 
(to a lower rank, provided that row 1 closest to player is rank 1)
I'm going to make a stab at this strange question.

the row or rank a piece starts on is its 'RANK' in reguards to range
captureing. this 'RANK' does not change once it moves forward or into
differnt positions on the board.

I know there is a ranking amoung range captureing piece to preserve an
order. But what about in reguards to other pieces? non range captureing
pieces. Also it hanst been quite defined. is 1 the highest rank (row), or
the lowest? Im confuzled.

bob

Hey, Bob!!!

can you provide a link for your printer tested pieces???? that'd make my
day!

I'd just like to say... I cant wait to play this game once it's more
canonized! Anyone who doesn't like large board shogi variants is afraid
of commitment! ;)

Here is my print-able 'westernized' version of the Taikyoku Shogi Set.

The movement patterns are based off of the descriptions I found here and from wikipedia. Some pieces I know are somewhat oddly described or given a differnt movement type via combineing the move 'this way OR this way' together so those overlapping 'directions' are combined. The entire set is available for download at the following location. All images are to scale for print out based on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with 1/2 side margins and 1 inch top & bottom margins. The pages have 'corner dots' which prevent 'streach/resize' programs from adjusting the final image's size after cropping off what it percieves as 'blank' space. This keeps all pages the exact same size each time it's printed. The only exception is the 'title, icon legend, and editors notes' pages which are all in an image format.

http://www.angelfire.com/alt2/robertkalin/tos.html

Please give me some feedback and tell me what you think. Feel free to distribute the set online. All that I request is that it is left unaltered and kept together in the same compressed 'zip' file complete with all pages including the title, icon legend, and editors notes pages.

Big-Ole-Bob