Masonic shogi

Masonic shogi is a shogi variant invented by George R. Dekle Sr. in 1987. It keeps the standard rules of shogi, including piece drops, promotion and the normal starting setup, but changes the geometry of the board itself: alternating ranks are staggered rightward so the grid resembles the offset pattern of masonry brickwork rather than an ordinary square grid. That staggering turns what would be straight files and diagonals in standard shogi into oblique lines, with the game's own files running at roughly thirty degrees from vertical and its diagonals at roughly thirty degrees from horizontal, giving it a feel related to hexagonal chess variants even though the pieces and their powers are unchanged from regular shogi. Two players play on this modified board, adapting their piece movement to the new angles while every other rule, capture, drop and promotion works exactly as it does in standard shogi. The variant was published and described in World Game Review No. 10, edited by Michael Keller, in June 1991.