---
title: "Is There Any Board Game Outside Xiangqi With a Piece Like the Cannon? · Xiangqi Master"
description: "Korean janggi has the closest relative, a screen-jumping cannon of its own, though with extra restrictions xiangqi's does not have. Nothing in western chess or its variants comes close."
url: https://xiangqimaster.com/blog/is-there-a-board-game-outside-xiangqi-with-a-piece-like-the-cannon
updated: 2026-09-23
source: Xiangqi Master (https://xiangqimaster.com)
license: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
---

# Is there a board game outside xiangqi with a piece like the cannon?

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
>
> **Korean janggi** has the only genuinely close relative, its own cannon (포) that also captures by jumping a screen. It is not identical: janggi's cannon needs a screen even to move, and it cannot jump or capture another cannon, restrictions xiangqi's cannon simply does not have. Outside that one relative, no western chess variant has anything comparable at all.

## Why the mechanism is so rare

A piece whose capture rule is deliberately different from its move rule is an unusual design choice, and almost nothing in the broader chess family does it. Chaturanga, shatranj, shogi and standard western chess all give every piece a single consistent rule for both moving and capturing, xiangqi's cannon, and janggi's more restricted version, are the exceptions.

## What makes xiangqi's version distinct even from janggi's

Because xiangqi's cannon moves freely along any clear line but only captures across exactly one screen, it can create threats that appear and disappear as unrelated pieces move around it. Janggi's added restrictions make its cannon a somewhat tamer, more predictable piece by comparison.

## Related questions

Does any single-player puzzle game use a similar jump-capture idea?

Draughts-style forced jumps look superficially similar but work on an entirely different principle, there the jump removes the piece jumped over, rather than requiring it as a screen to capture something beyond it.

Is the cannon unique to xiangqi's country of origin?

It appears to be a Chinese innovation, entering the game's piece set later than the other six, and it travelled to Korea along with the rest of the game.

## Related xiangqi resources

How the cannon moves

Captures only by jumping exactly one screen

Xiangqi questions answered

Every question on this site, in one index

History of xiangqi

When the game was invented, and what is actually documented

## Try it on a real board

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