---
title: "How Does a Cannon Perform in an Endgame With Only Soldiers Left? · Xiangqi Master"
description: "Reasonably well, since soldiers make cheap, expendable screens the opponent rarely wants to spend a move capturing, keeping the cannon's threats alive even as other screens disappear."
url: https://xiangqimaster.com/blog/how-does-a-cannon-perform-in-an-endgame-with-only-soldiers-left
updated: 2026-09-23
source: Xiangqi Master (https://xiangqimaster.com)
license: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
---

# How does a cannon perform in an endgame with only soldiers left?

These answers restate the rules implemented by our open-source engine, which follows the WXF laws and is regression-tested against the official 110-diagram repetition casebook. Where an answer refers to a specific position, that position lives on the linked reference page, where the build verifies it against the engine before publishing.

> Direct answer
>
> **Reasonably well**, better than the general rule of thumb about fading cannons would suggest. Soldiers are **cheap, plentiful screens** that an opponent rarely wants to spend a move capturing, so a cannon working alongside its own or the enemy's soldiers can keep finding threats even in a sparse position where advisors and elephants are long gone.

## Why soldiers are unusually good screens late on

Removing a soldier screen costs the defender a move for almost no material gain, so they often simply tolerate the cannon's threat rather than spend a tempo dealing with it. That reluctance is exactly what keeps a cannon's value from collapsing the way it does against a truly bare position.

## Where the general rule still applies

Once even the soldiers are gone, the same weakness returns in full: a cannon with nothing left to jump cannot check or capture at all. The soldier-heavy endgame is a genuine exception to the cannon's usual late-game decline, not a repeal of it.

## Related questions

Is this different from cannon-and-soldier as insufficient material?

Yes, this is about a cannon using any soldiers on the board as screens, not the specific minimum-material case covered in [insufficient material](https://xiangqimaster.com/blog/what-counts-as-insufficient-material).

Does this mean cannons stay strong right to the very end?

No, once the soldiers are also traded off, the usual decline in the cannon's value returns.

## Related xiangqi resources

Cannon endgames

The piece that fades as the board empties

Soldier endgames

Why a crossed soldier is worth double

How the soldier moves

Forward only, until it crosses the river

## Try it on a real board

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