Your move
Your move
Japanese chess, and the one big chess variant where nothing ever really leaves the board. Every piece you capture joins your hand, and on any later turn you can drop it back down as your own. Attacks never run out of material, trades are rarely simplifying, and a game that looks won can turn on a single dropped piece.
You play the bottom side and move first. Tap a piece to see where it can go, tap a dot to move. Opposing pieces are the ones printed upside-down — shogi tells the sides apart by which way the piece points, not by colour.
Reaching the far three ranks lets most pieces promote, and the game asks you when the choice is real. Promotion turns rook into dragon and bishop into horse, which keep their old moves and add a king's step; silver, knight, lance and pawn all promote to move exactly like gold. Promotion is compulsory when a piece would otherwise be stuck, such as a pawn on the last rank.
Captured pieces appear in the tray below the board. Tap one and every square you may drop it on lights up. Three drop rules matter: no piece may land where it could never move again, you may not have two of your own unpromoted pawns on the same file, and a dropped piece always arrives unpromoted. Win by leaving the opposing king with no legal move.
The drop rule changes what a trade means. In chess, swapping pieces simplifies; in shogi it just moves material from the board into somebody's hand, and a piece in hand is usually worth more than the same piece on the board because it can appear anywhere. Think twice before trading into a position where the opponent ends up holding more than you.
A pawn in hand is the cheapest attacking tool in the game. Dropping one in front of an enemy defender forces it to deal with a threat that cost you almost nothing, and because you may not have two unpromoted pawns on a file, the opponent can block a whole file against pawn drops by leaving one of their own pawns there. Watch which files are still open to you before you commit an attack.
Gold and silver are the castle, rook and bishop are the attack. Most strong openings spend the first ten moves building a wall of gold and silver around the king on one side while the rook works on the other, and games are decided by whether the attack arrives before the defence is finished. Do not push your king's defenders forward to win a lance.
Promoted rook and bishop are the game's decisive pieces because they keep their sliding range and gain a king's step, which lets them attack and defend at once. Getting a rook into the promotion zone is often worth a whole minor piece, and a dragon parked next to the enemy king usually ends the game.