Atlantean Coffee House Shatranj

(Grand Hexagonal Shatranj)

Introduction

It has been written:

"Atlantis was a city, island, and culture with many facets. The old and new nobility, along with the members of the merchant class with both wealth and aspirations, played Great Shatranj, a sedate, traditional old game. The young people, the intellectuals and artists, and the non-wealthy members of the merchant class played Grand Shatranj. This game is a bit more lively, with longer-range, more powerful pieces and more territory, but still maintaining a strong connection to the older Great Shatranj. It was the lower classes, the drinkers, poets, bards, craftsmen and clerks, sailors and servants, who evolved a game with a little life in it. All around Atlantis, in inns and low dives, Barroom shatranj was played, ..."

What is not mentioned is the game of choice of the Atlantean middle-order academic, cleric and clerical strata: the lecturers, readers and senior students in the Halls of Learning; the recorders, prosecuters, and advocates of the Halls of Justice; the bureaucrats, secretaries and scribes from the Central City Hall and Outlying District Halls; and the ecclesiastics, clergy and acolytes in their Halls of Devotion. These sober citizens frequented the many Coffee Houses to be found in the better districts where they indulged their passion for a Shatranj played on a board constructed from 127 hexagons.

Set-up

The starting position is shown in the following image:

Pieces

The pieces are those found in the square-celled shatranj variants and their movement adapted to hexagonal cells is illustrated in the table below.

Name	Notation	Number	Move
King	K	1
Knight	N	2
Elephant	E	3
Oliphsnt	O	3
WarMachine	W	2
BattleEngine	B	2
HighPriestess	H	1
Minister	M	1
JumpingGeneral	J	1
Pawn	P	10
Pawns move without capturing by taking a single orthogonal step forward. In the image on the right the pawn may move to the cells marked with a blue dot, provided they are empty. When capturing a pawn takes a single diagonal step forward. The pawn in the diagram may thus capture on the cells marked by a red dot. There is no initial double move and thus no en-passent capture.
Pawn Promotion
Pawns promote on reaching the 3 far-most ranks: ranks 11, 12, 13 for white; ranks 3, 2, 1 for black. The image on the right shows the promotion area for a white pawn with the cells marked by blue or white stars. The blue stars indicate cells where promotion is possible but not mandatory. The white stars indicate the cells where promotion is mandatory ( the far-most rank: 13 for white; 1 for black). Promotion is to any friendly captured piece or to a Guard.
Guard	G	0
Guards are not present on the board at the start of a game but may appear as the result of pawn promotion. Guards move one step in any direction, the same as the King, but may only exist within the promotion area. If moved outside of this area a Guard will revert to a Pawn, Thus in the right-hand image the Guard may move to any cell marked with a blue or red dot. The blue dots mark cells within the promotion area, so the Guard will remain a Guard. If moved to a cell marked by a red dot the Guard will become a Pawn as these cells are not within the promotion area.