Zillions of Games file for Xhatranj

Notes

This game is like Shatranj, but the rooks are 'hook movers'. The pieces with 'hook moving' capabilities are very powerful pieces. The 'hook mover' itself has a double rook move, being able to move any number of squares in any orthogonal direction, immediately followed by a further move at right angles to the first. The two legs of the 'Hook Mover' move do not have to be of the same length, and it is not compulsory that it make a 2nd Rook move. To give some idea of the power of this move it is worth noting that the 'Hook Mover' on an empty board would be able to reach any square in one turn! <p>In the ancient shogi variants, it must end it's move with a capture, but that sounds pretty boring, so we made it that it does not have to make a capture to end it's move. The variants that have the 'Hook Mover' are 'Tai Shogi', 'Maka-Dai-Dai Shogi' and 'Dai-Dai Shogi'. <p>So the 'Rahke' is a very powerful piece, so powerful, we had to make the other 'normal' Shatranj pieces a bit more powerful, so they could help protect the King. We gave the Fers the power to move like a King, the Alfil the added power of the King move, and the Knight the added power of the Alfil and King. Believe us, they need it :-)

Image(s)

Download Instructions

The ZRF file and its accompanying graphics are bundled together in a .zip file. These will work with Zillions of Games, a Windows program that will let you play any puzzle or strategy board game you can feed it the rules and graphics for.

Instructions on downloading this Zillions file:

• Download the .zip file
• Using a program such as PeaZip or 7-Zip, extract the contents of the .zip file to your Zillions of Games folder
• Be sure to keep the folder structure intact when you extract the files.

Xhatranj is a Zillions-of-Games file. It is categorized as: Two dimensional.

By Christine Bagley-Jones and David Howe.