Xiangqi Magic Tiles
Chess of movable symbols or, more simply, Xiangqi Tiles - perhaps this will be the best translation for the name of this amazing variant of Xiangqi.
And this is certainly, in my opinion, the most striking and, I'm not afraid to add such an epithet as a stunning, board strategy game that I've been lucky enough to get acquainted with lately.
There are about three hundred variants of Chinese chess, or even more, but this variety of Xiangqi is not only unlike all the others, but also has its own unique gameplay and originality.
A special 8x8 board with recesses in the places of each individual board cell is used for the game. In each of these cells with recesses, a tile will be placed - a square wooden tile - on which the name of a particular piece of Chinese chess is depicted.
There are 64 such tiles in total, they all have Chinese symbols of Xiangqi pieces drawn on them, namely 8 generals, 8 advisers, 8 elephants, 8 cannons, 8 rooks, 8 knights and 16 pawns. Before the game starts, all these tiles are shuffled and randomly laid out face up on each cell of the playing field.
Then each of the players places 16 chips of their own color on their first two horizontal rows (1-2 for white and 7-8 for black). The chip is a disk with a large round hole in the middle so that you can distinguish the face value of the tile located under it.
White starts the game. The concept of white is conditional, since the colors of the chips used in the game may be different for each side. In our case, in the picture above, the players use red and blue chips. In any case, the first player can be determined by lot.
The chip moves on the board according to the tile on which it is located before the start of its movement. Since the symbols on the tiles are images of pieces in Chinese chess, the movement of the chip will correspond to how the piece moves in ordinary Xiangqi. The only exception is the pawn. The chip standing on the tile with the image of a pawn moves the way a pawn moves on the enemy's territory across the river in a normal Xiangqi, that is, straight and sideways.
Now a very interesting and important point. Instead of making a move with his chip, the player can swap any free tile (on any part of the board) with the adjacent free tile vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Of course, there should be no chips on these tiles. If one of the players swaps tiles, then the next player must make a move with his chip.
Before us is a game of capturing chess material with an ever-changing game plot on the playing field. There is no check and checkmate here.
The player who first captures all the opponent's chips wins.
In the example above, the player wins the game by moving his chip from the rook tile to the bishop tile. On the next turn the golden chip standing on the bishop tile captures the last silver chip. The player with the gold chips won.
Those who are familiar with Chinese chess can try to play against the bot here (registration is not required):
https://glukkazan.github.io/xiangqi/litter-chess.htm
Or on the Dagaz server, where you can play both live and by correspondence:
After playing several games online on the server of the enthusiast of traditional board games and the wonderful programmer Valentin Chelnokov, I fell in love with this game so much that I was eager to transfer the simple and ingenious idea of Xiangqi Tiles to ordinary chess.
Considering the significant difference between Xiangqi pawns and standard chess pawns, and also taking into account the presence of a larger number of long-range and more maneuverable game units in ordinary chess, I dare to suggest the following ratio of standard chess pieces for 64 tiles: 16 kings, 12 queens, 12 rooks, 12 bishops and 12 knights.
Ok, let's take a game board:
We shuffled and randomly laid out 64 tiles face up:
Next, we will place the chips for the game on the board. In our case, each of the players places colored squares:
Now you can start the game and get unforgettable pleasure from it.
