Gunjin Shogi

About

Literally meaning ‘Soldier Shogi’, Gunjin Shogi is not really related to Shogi other than by having a military theme and pentagonal pieces. The game is more similar to Army Chess (Lu Zhan Jun Qi) or Stratego, featuring hidden pieces and a hierarchical system of combat, where higher ranked pieces defeat lower ones: the objective is to capture the opponent’s flag. Like Army Chess, Gunjin Shogi requires a third person to act as umpire and resolve combat. Unlike Army Chess (and more like Hai Lu Kong Jun Qi), Gunjin Shogi includes planes and tanks. There are many versions of the game with different board sizes and piece numbers but the basic rules are the same. In one version each player has 23 pieces, consisting of a flag, 12 officers, 2 planes, 2 tanks, a cavalry unit, two engineers, a spy and two land mines. There is a hierarchy of ranks, with some exceptions – planes naturally cannot be destroyed by land mines and engineers deactivate land mines, for instance. Recent studies game dates it to pre-1895 around the end of the first Sino-Japanese War, and this makes Gunjin Shogi the oldest known Stratego type game as of now.

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