Kani Nari Ebi
Kani Nari Ebi Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Objective
This is a "new-era hasami shogi" (capturing game) played with the Crab piece, which can move any number of squares horizontally, and the Shrimp piece, which can move only one square diagonally.
Aim for one of the following:
- Capture three of the opponent's pieces first.
- Turn three of your own Crabs into Shrimp first.
- Leave every one of the opponent's pieces unable to move.
Contents
- 10 pieces (5 red, 5 black). Each piece shows a Crab on one face and a Shrimp on the other, so a piece is flipped in place to promote it rather than swapped for a different piece.
- 1 game board.
- 1 instruction booklet (this booklet).
Setup
- Sit on either side of the board and each choose a color of pieces.
- Then, following the setup diagram, place all of your pieces Crab-side up on the board: each player's five Crabs fill the entire column of five squares on their own side of the board (their "home column"). The center column of the board is the River — it starts empty. The columns next to each player's home column are empty at setup.
- Off to each side of the board is a "net square" holding area, used later to keep captured pieces from wandering off; it is not part of the playing grid.
- Finally, decide who goes first — for example, by rock-paper-scissors.
Turn Sequence
- Starting with the first player, players alternate taking one turn each.
- On your turn, make one "normal move" with one of your pieces. After moving, resolve River (if applicable), then Bond (if applicable), then Capturing (if applicable), in that order.
- If the normal move ends in the River, a forced additional move happens automatically: the piece is swept to the far edge of the River. After that forced move, resolve Bond and then Capturing.
- If Bond triggers, you may make one additional move (once per turn). After that move, resolve River and then Capturing again. If Bond has already been used this turn, only Capturing is checked afterward.
- To capture an enemy piece, the piece you moved and one of your own pieces must together sandwich an enemy piece in a straight line (see Capturing below).
Moving Pieces
- Crab: moves any number of squares in a horizontal direction only (left or right along its row). A Crab cannot move vertically or diagonally.
- Shrimp: moves exactly one square, in any diagonal direction only.
- A piece may never jump over another piece — friendly or enemy — and may never move onto a square that is already occupied. Any square blocking the path (or the destination) simply stops that move from being legal.
Shrimp Promotion
- When a Crab enters the opponent's home column, you may optionally flip it over to promote it into a Shrimp. Once a piece has become a Shrimp, it loses the Crab's horizontal movement and gains the Shrimp's one-square diagonal movement — it can never be turned back into a Crab.
- Promotion is always optional at the moment it happens.
FAQ: If a Crab enters the opponent's home column and its owner chooses not to promote it, and that same Crab later enters the opponent's home column again, its owner may choose to promote it then. (Yes, this is allowed.)
River
- Whenever a Crab or Shrimp moves from a normal square into a River square (the center column), its owner chooses whether the current carries it up or down, and the piece is then forcibly swept all the way to the end of the River in that direction.
- However, if a piece already occupies a River square in that direction, the moving piece cannot leap over it — it stops just short, immediately before that obstacle.
- If a piece enters the River from the topmost or bottommost normal-square row of the board, its owner may still freely choose whether the current flows up or down.
- Inside the River, a piece keeps floating until it hits an obstacle (a friendly or enemy piece) or the edge of the board. Once it comes back out onto a normal square, it is no longer swept automatically — the current only acts while the piece is actually inside a River square.
Example 1: A Crab in the bottom-left moves two squares to the right into a River square. Its owner chooses to send the current downward. The Crab is swept down to the bottommost square of the River.
Example 2: A Crab in the top-left moves two squares to the right into a River square. Its owner chooses to send the current downward. Since a piece already sits in the bottom River square, the moving Crab is swept down and stops on the square just above that piece.
Bond
- After a normal move, if two or more of your own Crabs — or two or more of your own Shrimp — end up orthogonally adjacent (vertically or horizontally; diagonal adjacency does not count), you may choose one piece from that adjacent group and move it one square diagonally. This action is called a "Bond."
- Bond may be used at most once per turn, immediately after a normal move, and is always optional.
- The pieces eligible to be moved by a Bond are: (1) the piece that just moved, (2) any piece directly adjacent to the piece that just moved, and (3) any piece belonging to the same connected group as the piece that just moved.
- A piece that becomes newly adjacent only as a result of the Bond move itself cannot then also be moved by that same Bond — Bond triggers once per turn, off the adjacency created by the normal move.
Example: Piece 4 moves two squares to the right. This creates adjacency among pieces 2, 3, and 4, so all three are eligible Bond targets; the diagram's shaded squares show where each of them could move diagonally as its one Bond move.
Capturing Enemy Pieces
- You capture enemy pieces by sandwiching them between your own pieces along a straight vertical or horizontal line (the two sandwiching pieces may be any combination of your own Crabs and Shrimp).
- You can capture more than one enemy piece at the same time, if the sandwich catches several of them at once.
- Both a normal move and a Bond move can each trigger a capture, so it is possible to capture enemy pieces twice in a single turn — once after the normal move and again after the Bond move.
- You are never captured by moving your own piece in between two enemy pieces — a sandwich only captures the piece(s) that end up trapped by the other player's move.
- It's a good idea to place captured pieces into the net squares at the side of the board so they don't get mixed up with pieces still in play. Once captured, a piece cannot be reintroduced to the board (unlike traditional shogi, captured pieces are never reused).
Immobilization
- You can also win by using the edges of the board to trap an enemy piece against the border so that it has no legal move left — this is called immobilization.
- If a player is left with zero pieces able to legally move on their next turn, they immediately lose the game.
End of Game and Victory Conditions
The game ends immediately, and the player who achieved it wins, the moment any one of these conditions is met:
- You have captured three of the opponent's pieces.
- Three of your own Crabs have become Shrimp (a Shrimp that was later captured does not count toward this total).
- Every one of the opponent's remaining pieces on the board is immobilized (unable to make any legal move).
Notes on the Source Rulebook
The source document transcribed here is the rulebook for Ebikani Shogi (2024), described by Game NOWA as a 10th-anniversary remake of the designer's original 2014 game "Kani Shogi." Game NOWA's own listing for Kani nari Ebi states that Kani nari Ebi uses this same ruleset, changing only the artwork, theme, and physical components (an "ocean" reskin, played 2-player, on a board with a marked River column and net squares as described above). Kani nari Ebi credits: game design by Kabuki Kenichi (Game NOWA); title logo and character design by icho.