In December 2021, I wrote a short story for Calliope's Collection of Mystical Mayhem, a children's fantasy anthology started by Wild Ink Publishing. The first of many mini projects, I hope. Enjoy~
In Mandarin, Xiangqi directly translates to Elephant Chess, but is also colloquially called Chinese chess in English. Xiàng means 'elephant' while qí means chess.
Pronunciation for those who understand phonetics(pinyin): Xiàngqí For those who don't: 'See-ang Chee' (Say 'See-ang' fast)
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I found a pretty helpful video, and was tempted to just leave it here and be done, but I also wanted to try my hand at giving y'all a rundown. It's more personal like that. To add my own spin, I'm also going to add what I think Xiangqi should do differently. If you find your brains melting, I'm sorry :/ :D Mine does every time I try to play.. But it sharpens my mind! Also thanks for reading this far, I hope you've all waded through my blather. It means the world to me if you have!
Here's the board again. I'm going to start on the pieces from the bottom, then unpack the two features of the ah...terrain that shape battle movements. Oh, and just so we are all clear, the objective is to kill the General by hitting it with an attack that it cannot evade by moving out of the way, or dodging behind another piece.
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1) Soldiers/pawns/(spears in my story)
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As the picture shows, they can only move forward one step when they start out. They can't ever retreat, but once they have crossed the river, they can also move sideways, which international/western chess doesn't allow. And that's how they capture too. Forward in their own lands, forward or sideways in enemy territory.
What I think they should allow soldier pieces to do is: I. move sideways in their own land. This will allow more variety in movements and formations, and something similar to the wedge described in my story could actually become possible (though there's still not enough to pull it off). So that could bring more offensive and defensive tactics to the table.
II. promote ranks when they reach the end of enemy lands. This is a thing in international/western chess, and could either be a tipping point for losing players, or help winning players go ahead and cinch their victories. Would that be unfair? Not really, I think. It's hard work getting a humble soldier through enemy lines, whether a player is losing or winning, so it sort of warrants a reward.
