📐 Supply Chinese Chess in one paragraph
Supply Chinese Chess is Xiangqi played as bughouse. Four players sit at two boards. You and your partner are a team, but you sit at different boards and play opposite colours. Every piece you capture is handed across to your partner, who may drop it onto their own board as one of their own. Nothing is taken off the table — it changes sides and changes board.
Board 1
Red — Team Red Black — Team Blackto the other board
Board 2
Red — Team Black Black — Team Red🤝 Who is your partner?
The player at the other board playing the opposite colour. Team Red is Board 1 Red together with Board 2 Black. Team Black is Board 1 Black together with Board 2 Red.
📦 Where do captures go?
Into your partner's reserve, on the other board, recoloured as theirs. Capture a Black Chariot on Board 1 and your partner on Board 2 gains a Chariot they can drop as their own.
👑 What about Generals?
A General is never taken into a reserve and can never be dropped. There is exactly one on each side of each board for the whole game.
🏁 How does the match end?
A side loses a board only when it has neither a legal move nor a legal drop. Each board won scores one point; the team with more board wins takes the match.
🤔 Why is it called "Supply"?
Because that is what you are doing for your partner. A trade that looks even on your board may be a gift on theirs — you are not only playing your game, you are stocking someone else's.
🀄 Do I need to know Xiangqi?
It helps, but the movement tab below covers every piece from scratch. If you have played Western chess, the Chariot is a rook and the Horse is a knight that can be blocked.
The trade you should not make
In ordinary Xiangqi, trading a Horse for a Horse is neutral. Here it is not. The Horse you capture arrives in your partner's reserve; the Horse you lose arrives in your opponent's partner's reserve. An even trade on your board is an even exchange of ammunition between the two teams, and whoever converts it faster wins. Before every capture, the question is not "is this even?" but "who is better placed to use it?"
🧩 Where can this piece actually be dropped?
Pick a piece and a colour. Every point the game would accept is marked. These are not approximations — the page runs the same tests the board does.
📜 Every restriction on a drop
1. Your own half only
Red drops on ranks 1–5, Black on ranks 6–10. You can never parachute a piece into the opponent's position — a drop is reinforcement, not an invasion.
2. Onto an empty point
A drop never captures. If you want the square, you have to take it with a move first.
3. Never a General
Generals are not captured into reserves, so they are never available to drop.
4. Restricted pieces keep their homes
An Advisor may only land on the five palace points. An Elephant may only land on one of its seven natural points. A Soldier may only land on its starting rank or one step in front, and only on the odd files. Chariot, Cannon and Horse may go anywhere legal on your half.
5. A drop may block check — but never give it
This is the rule that catches experienced bughouse players. In this game you cannot drop a piece that attacks the enemy General. You may drop to interpose against a check on you, but a drop can never be the check itself. Checkmate has to be built with moves.
And a drop is a whole turn
On your turn you either move a piece or drop one. You never do both.
When nobody can do anything
If the player to move has no legal move and no legal drop, they lose that board — as in Xiangqi, being stuck is a loss and not a draw. A reserve can therefore save you: a position with no moves is not lost if you still hold a piece you can legally place. The only draw is the long one — 100 turns with no capture and no drop ends the board level.
📜 How the seven pieces move
Movement here is ordinary Xiangqi — nothing about the supply line changes how a piece travels. Pieces sit on the intersections, not the squares, on a board nine files wide and ten ranks deep, split by a river.
車 Chariot
Any distance along a rank or file, like a rook. The strongest piece on the board, and the one you least want to hand over.
砲 Cannon
Moves like a Chariot, but captures only by jumping exactly one piece — of either colour — with the target immediately beyond it. Without a screen it cannot take anything.
馬 Horse
One point straight then one diagonally out. It can be blocked: a piece on the point it steps through stops the move entirely. No jumping.
象 Elephant
Exactly two points diagonally, and blocked if the midpoint is occupied. It can never cross the river, so it is a defender for the whole game.
士 Advisor
One point diagonally, and never outside the palace — the three-by-three box in front of the General. Five points and no more.
將 帥 General
One point orthogonally, inside the palace only. The flying general rule applies: the two Generals may never face each other down an open file, and a General may capture the other along one.
兵 卒 Soldier
One point forward, never backward. Once it crosses the river it may also move one point sideways. A dropped Soldier lands behind the river, so it starts life moving forward only.
⚡ Four players is the hard part, and it is solved
The usual reason a four-player variant dies is that you cannot get four people into a room at once. You do not have to — the game page opens with three buttons, and only one of them needs anybody else.
🎓 Start with the guided lesson
Try guided lesson on the game page walks you through one real capture, watching it arrive in your partner's reserve, and deploying it. It is the shortest way to understand the supply line, because you do it rather than read it.
🤖 Practice against three bots
Practice vs 3 bots gives you one seat and hands the other three to the computer. A real game, on demand, with nobody to wait for — and the fastest way to get the drop rules into your fingers.
🔗 One link, no accounts
Start 4-player room, then Copy Link, gives you a URL to send to as many people as turn up. Anyone who does not arrive is a bot. No sign-up, no install.
🪑 Pick your seat
Seats are named by board and colour — B1 Red, B1 Black, B2 Red, B2 Black. Remember your partner is the opposite colour on the other board.
🗣️ Talk to your partner
The whole game is in the request. "Do not trade your Cannon", "I need a Chariot", "hold — I am one drop from a mate". A silent team is two people playing two separate games of Xiangqi.
Strategy that is specific to the supply line
Count the other reserve
Your opponent's reserve is filled by their partner. If the other board is bloody, expect drops soon and stop leaving loose points on your own half.
Sit on a piece
A reserve piece is a threat while it is in hand and a target once it is on the board. Holding a Chariot back to answer an attack is often worth more than placing it now.
Advisors and Elephants are cheap gifts
They can only be dropped on a handful of defensive points, so handing one over costs your opponent's partner very little flexibility. Trading a Chariot is a different matter entirely.
Because drops cannot check…
…a drop can never finish the game on its own. Build the mate with moves and use drops to close escape squares and defend the answer.
Watch the clock on the other board
Your supply stops when your partner's board ends. If they are losing, the pieces you need may never arrive — attack while you are still being fed.
A stuck position is losable
No move and no drop is a loss. If your position is cramped, keeping one droppable piece in hand is sometimes the only thing standing between you and the end of the board.
Ready?
Open Supply Chinese Chess — free, no sign-up, no install, and the empty seats fill themselves. If you want ordinary one-board Xiangqi first, the Chinese Chess guide covers movement in more depth, and Xiangqi vs Western chess is the fastest way in if you already play chess.