Chess 5D ...?!?!

[vienna]

Of the current, established variants of chess, the Japanese game of Shogi is, to me, the most impressive in its mimicry of real-life war situations; in Shogi, a captured piece, unlike in Western chess, does not simply vanish from the board permanently, since the captured piece can be reinserted into the game by the player who captured the piece as one of his/her own pieces; this was incorporated into Shogi to mimic the situations in real Japanese warfare where soldiers or armies of defeated feudal lords were given the option of changing sides/loyalties in order to survive and to also to provide the capturing lord with a source of new warriors; I've played the game a few times and it is indeed a disconcerting aspect to the game to have to keep an eye on lost pieces in addition to those still on the board and know a powerful piece you lost may, perhaps, return to be used against you...




<O>