Million Shogi
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THE iDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE: Million Shogi (アイドルマスター ミリオンライブ！ ミリオンしょうぎ Aidorumasutaa mirionraibu! Mirion shougi) is a special shogi variation utilizing characters from THE iDOLM@STER Million Live! made by Kleeblatt. The game was sold with 3 different versions of sets for each of the Princess Stars, Fairy Stars, and Angel Stars subunits. This variant of shogi is meant to be a simplified and faster version of shogi that can be played by 2 players even at a young age.
Gameplay
Objective
There are 2 ways for a player to claim victory:
1. Claim the opponent's king.
2. Advance your king to your opponent's camp (last row away from the player). However if the king is immediately taken the next turn, then the player loses.
Differences Million Shogi and standard Shogi
- Million Shogi uses a 3 tile wide by 4 tile long board.
- All pieces can only move one square at a time.
- There is an additional win condition of the player's "king" reaching the opponent's camp.
- Pieces are characters instead of specific chess-like roles (knight, king, rook, etc.) despite still functioning as chess-like pieces.
- If the players make the same positional moves 3 turns in a row, the game is considered a draw.
- Perpetual checks (continuous checking) will also force a draw.
Setup
1. Each producer (player) will sit at opposite ends of the board. One player will be on the seaside and the other will be on the mountainside.
2. Each producer will select 1 piece of each color from the available 13 tiles in a set (purple, green, blue, and orange).
The rest of the tiles will be set aside and will be unused.
3. Each player must arrange their pieces as shown in the table below:
| Player 2 Blue |
Player 2 Purple |
Player 2 Green |
|---|---|---|
| EMPTY | Player 2 Orange |
EMPTY |
| EMPTY | Player 1 Orange |
EMPTY |
| Player 1 Green |
Player 1 Purple |
Player 1 Blue |
A Player's pieces should be placed facing upright respective to their view so that it is clear which player owns which pieces.
4. Use any sort of system to determine which player goes first.
5. Each player takes turns making moves until a win or draw condition is met. Turns cannot be passed or skipped.
- Only one piece may be moved during a player's turn.
- If both players continuously move the same positional moves with the same piece for 3 turns in a row (moving back and forth), then the game is a draw.
Pieces
All pieces in Million Shogi depict a Million Live! idol. The role of Million Shogi pieces are determined by the background color of the piece and 4 colors are used in Million Shogi: purple, green, blue, and orange.
Movement abilities of all pieces are also denoted by the dots placed on the edges of every piece as a reference.
| Role | Color | Movement ability | Idols |
|---|---|---|---|
| King | Purple | Any direction |
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| Bishop | Green | Diagonal |
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| Rook | Blue | Vertical and horizontal |
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| Pawn | Orange | Forward If a pawn reaches the opposite end of the board, |
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| Promoted (Idolized) Pawn |
Orange | Any direction except for backwards diagonals (back left and back right) |
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Capturing and Dropping pieces
No 2 pieces may occupy the same square, so by moving one piece on top of another piece that belongs to an opponent a player captures the piece (or convinces the idol to join their team). Captured pieces are taken and placed outside the board on the side of the player that captured pieces.
During a player's turn, they may choose to drop one of their captured pieces on an empty square facing upright respective to the player as a piece under their control instead of moving a piece on board. All pieces that are dropped are unpromoted even if the piece was originally captured as a promoted piece.
Game Credits
- Game Designer: Madoka Kitao (Women's Professional Shogi)
- Packaging and other designs: nagian
- Supervisor: Highlife (Spieldisorder)
- Planning: Naoki Hata (Kleeblatt)
- Special Thanks: gym, Subuta, Ryouchi Ikkai
Trivia
- Million Shogi is based off a Keeblatt shogi variant called Animal Shogi (どうぶつしょうぎ Doubutsu shougi).
- According to nagian's blog entries on their Fanbox, the idea to create a collaboration version of Animal Shogi with Million Live came from staff from Kleeblatt that was addicted to Million Live. They did not confirm if it was Naoki Hata or someone else.
- nagian was originally approached to work on the art design for the game due to their background with board game development, but ultimately ended up working on the packaging design due to other circumstances that prevented them from working on the art.
Links
- THE iDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE: Million Shogi (Princess Stars ver.)
- THE iDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE: Million Shogi (Fairy Stars ver.)
- THE iDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE: Million Shogi (Angel Stars ver.)
- THE iDOLM@STER Portal Million Shogi release announcement
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