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Ed wrote on Tue, Mar 27, 2012 08:32 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

@Mats: I have enjoyed your ZRF very much for a while.  Without wishing to
sound ungrateful for your effort, which I most certainly esteem, if there
would be one thing that I might change about it (for aesthetic purposes
only, to be sure, and for some kind of nod to the exotic origin of the
game), it would be to use graphics like those in diagrams in native shatar
literature, at least as an option.  One would still have to produce a
suitable graphic for the hia, though, and the representation of the king as
a palace or pagoda was a bit surprising for me at first when I saw it.  I
would provide images to illustrate, but the books I consulted were part of
a library collection of Mongolian materials.  These books were printed in
Inner Mongolia, so I have no way of verifying that the practice holds in
the Republic of Mongolia or Tuva.

For a while I had hoped to be able to submit details about other large
shatar variants that seem to have been played historically in Mongolia.  My
correspondent from Ulaanbaatar tantalized me by mentioning 9x9, 10x10
(hiashatar), 11x11, and 12x12 board sizes, but made no mention of the
pieces populating the board or powers they possess.

As to hiashatar, I was hoping to have more information from my
correspondent to resolve what seems the variability in the moves reported
for the hia.  I hope that an English-speaking Mongolian (or Chinese with
access to fuller information in authoritative sources) might read this and
supply us with more detail.

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Comments

Hiashatar

. Mongolian Great Chess played on a 10x10 board with a pair of Bodyguard pieces per side.

Kevin Pacey wrote on Thu, Mar 1, 2018 08:15 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

This variant is almost guaranteed to produce a hard struggle. Those bodyguard pieces are tough to work around!

Bukovski wrote on Mon, Nov 27, 2017 07:57 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

I have sampled a few games of hiashatar on an 8x10 board and have concluded that it results in much too constricted positions, even if pieces come into contact sooner and the balance of open squares and number of pieces matches chess. I have seen hia chess on CVP and would like to know if others have experience of the hia on a smaller board and have evaluated its suitability for a board of fewer ranks. I used to think hiashatar seemed too large, but now I am unsure. I would welcome opinions or accounts of player experiences.

Ed wrote on Fri, Mar 30, 2012 03:03 PM UTC:

@Mats: I added a favorable comment on the page linking to your excellent
hiashatar ZRF, which I will not repeat here.

I only wanted to give a link for anyone interested in the kind of diagram
to which I refer in native shatar literature:
http://shop.kongfz.com/show_pics.php?shopId=6625&bookId=34840797

The image shows some pieces in a diagram that decorate the book cover of a
problem collection.  I wish I had clearer page images to refer to, but the
point is somewhat moot, given the fine, aesthetically pleasing solution
that Mats offers in his ZRF.

M Winther wrote on Thu, Mar 29, 2012 08:53 AM UTC:

Ed, I have now added an alternative 3D piece set to my ZRF. I found images
on the net, resized and coloured them. I also added an outlined board 
instead of a squared one. The result is reasonably good:
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/hiashatar.htm
/Mats

Ed wrote on Wed, Mar 28, 2012 04:10 PM UTC:

@Mats: The sources I consulted are most probably still in copyright, but, even if not and if I still had access to them, maybe not in the public domain. I may find isolated examples of similar images, at least to illustrate what I mean. The other feature of the diagrams, the monochromatic board, requires no example. I doubt that the images of the initial shatar and hiashatar arrays from Okano's book that appear on the internet could be used without his permission. They differ, too, in this way, from the diagrams that I observed in shatar problem literature: WQ and P look like larger and smaller versions of sprinting spotted panthers, BQ and P like a large, lean lion (or dog) and similarly shaped young, also extended as if on the run. B looked, of course like a camel, darkened on one side, lighter for the other. N looked like a horse, and R like a cart. Both B and N were not depicted so as to suggest movement. All the pieces, apart from the pagoda/palace shaped piece that represented K, were presented in profile; White's pieces faced left, as I remember, and Black's faced right.

Number of ratings: 7, Average rating: Excellent, Number of comments: 18

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