New 7x7Shogi variant ~ 金剛将棋

I made a small shogi variant a while back, and although it hasn't gotten much in the way of play testing, I thought I'd share it here.

I studied Esoteric Buddhism for a number of years (from a scholarly point of view) and discovered a very interesting script used in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism for Sanskrit words.

The interesting part is that it no longer exists in India, later being developed into other scripts like Devanagri. It is called Siddham.

So, I decided to use this particularly fascinating script for the shogi pieces.

From India to Japan, just like Shogi iteself. Seems fitting.

I named it 金剛将棋 (Kongo Shogi) to show its source from Esoteric Buddhism.

I have a rulebooklet in progress, just need to piece it together.

Here is the board:

I used the seed syllables for different Buddhas and Boddhisattvas for the pieces. Not so much a battle game, as the struggle to enlighten ones mind.