So, you learned how the pieces move and set up a board.
Great, but what now?
What first move should you make, how do you build up your position and how to attack?
Let's look together on few examples around these three main points.

Although there are many ways to start a game of shogi in this lesson we're going to focus on one basic concept: Activating your big pieces!

This is the most commonly played first move and there are two main reasons for that:
First, it opens up many more playable moves e.g. a knight jump.
Second and most importantly it activates your bishop, one of your two big pieces. It now has a direct influence on your opponents camp.

The second most played opening move is pushing the rook pawn. Although it seems less impactful it still follows the basic principle of activating the rook. Further along you would push the pawn again and try to attack the weak head of your opponents bishop.

Now that we know what the two most common opening moves are it's time to decide which one you should play. As the chapter title implies there are two basic strategies which every other strategy can be categorized under: Static rook (Ibisha) and ranging rook (Furibisha). These are based on your rook position during the opening phase of the game. Let's have a look.

As you can guess from the name probably this is when the rook stays in its initial position. "Well thank you, captain obvious" you may think but this also applies when you move the rook to any other file right from the middle one.

This is when you move your rook to the left side of your camp. This also includes usually the middle file. In general if the rook moves the strategies end up being named after file the rook lands on e.g 4th-File Rook, Central Rook etc...

Deciding on what opening move you play you may find yourself (semi) locked into one of the two categories rather quickly. Let's say you pushed your rook pawn first: It seem counterproductive to slide the rook to another file after that now, doesn't it? So it seems just opening up the bishop diagonal first gives you more flexibility and possibly hides your intentions. The trade off would be some speed loss and giving your opponent (more) control on the flow of the game. Also one thing we didn't account for uptil now was: Who makes the first move? It obviously makes a huge difference if you are Sente or Gote. For example, if you pushed your rook pawn first and your opponent just opened the bishop diagonal, you can practically force him to defend first by simply pushing your pawn again. As Gote, you wouldn’t be necessarily able to do that. Anyway, now let’s move on to some practical examples of building up your position. And that would be…

Now, you may be familiar with the concept from chess. It fulfills the same role here: Improved king safety. However, contrary to chess there is no special move or condition about it in Shogi. You just move your pieces with good old elbow grease into a formation and put your king in it (or don't, hey who am I to tell you ;) ). A shogi proverb tells us to do so with two golds and a silver. There are many castles and variations of them in shogi and many deciding factors on which to choose. To name a few of those deciding factors: Are you playing static or ranging rook? Is your opponent playing static or ranging rook? Are you primarily defending or attacking? How strong do you want your castle to be or do you even have time to build it up? Once again, the most deciding factor would be the general strategy. In general you want your king far away from your main attacking piece, the rook. That's why usually in static rook openings one castles to the left while with ranging rook we castle on the right. Ofcourse there are some exceptions but this would be the basic outline. Following are only few examples.

More of transitional formation to other castles but prevents early, aggressive attacks from being effective. Weak to on the sides and the king can't escape vertically, hence the name crab for he is only being able to move side to side.

Static rooks most famous castle probably. Strong against frontal attacks, weak on the side and doesn't handle bishop drops too well in the late game. Due to it's popularity it's well studied and was declared dead for the better part of the last decade or so but recently sees a resurgence.

Not as strong as against frontal attacks and still pretty weak on the sides, but it allows for more flexibility and balance which stronger players can take advantage of.

A peculiarity, going against the established principal of keeping the rook and king far away from eachother. This castle however works because the king is far away from attacks to begin with, having much space to maneuver and ,because of the rook on the back rank in combination with the balanced piece formation, no space for the opponent to drop.

A castle against a ranging rook player. Its defensive power is not that great but it is assembled pretty fast and allows for you to dictate the pace of the game.

One of the strongest castles against ranging rook players, especially in higher levels of play. Beginners and amateurs may find it hard to start an attack and it takes a lot of moves to assemble which makes it susceptible to fast attacks. But once assembled you can focus on attack without worry of sudden checks (and mates).

Ranging rooks bread and butter castle, similarly famous and studied as static rooks yagura. Strong against rooks from the side, weak from the front and the edge.

A natural evolution of Mino, getting rid of most major weaknesses from the front while losing a bit of it's defense from the side.

The final form of the Mino series, a really strong castle with no readily available weaknesses to speak of. However it takes many moves and has some timing with floating pieces your opponent is bound to take advantage of.

A variant where the second gold is not part of it (yet). Commonly seen when building a mino castle but also played if that is not an option or you want to have more balance in your camp.

Mostly seen when you expect your opponent to swing the rook over. Doesn't take too much time to build and is stronger against frontal assaults. The backrank suffers though and the king has not much space.

The original form and probably strongest castle in terms of defense. As explained with static rooks version, it takes many moves to assemble making it susceptible to fast attacks and lacking in the attacking department a bit.

Now that we decided on our general strategy and build up our position by castling it's time to attack. "But how?" you might ask. If you remember, the proverb for castling said to use two golds and a silver. Therefore we still have one silver leftover so let's use it. One of the most basic forms of attack regardless of your general strategy is to use your silver in tandem with your rook to break through into your opponents camp. In the following we'll look at one of the most famous examples of just doing this: The Climbing Silver (Bougin).

This silver move indicates that you might go for it, so let's just do that.

As you can see, the name of this attack stems from the silver "climbing" along the rooks attacking line.

Now let's look at a more practical example:

The climbing silver strategy is all about sacrifice. We gave up our silver but broke into the enemy camp with a powerful blow!

Don't be afraid, don't retreat the silver, instead attack with confidence! If your opponent foolishly takes the "free" silver you will break through with your rook and gain a great advantage!

So, now you and your opponent traded silvers. This seems like no big deal and maybe even time waste, but in this case you as the attacker get a slight advantage because you removed a defending piece from your opponent while getting the flexibility to drop a silver for your next attack anywhere you want. You can capitalize on that.