During the pandemic of 2020, I, like many others, found myself with a surplus of free time.
Not one to be discouraged, I put it to good use by buying myself a big box of Sculpey polymer clay, and building equipment for one of my favorite board games of all time, chess.
I didn't want it to just be any old chess set you could just buy at your local game store for like, a buck, though, so I decided to make it special, by making (mostly) all the pieces look human.
Then, I had some clay left over, so I started making more pieces, from different variants of chess!
I'll make this a thread showing off all the pieces and their movement patterns.
The King, the most important piece on the chessboard. Without him, there would be no game of chess. His loyal subjects have been tasked with upholding his safety, and threatening that of the other King. The King can move one square in any direction. (On this board, valid moves will be marked with poker chips.)
While the King is the most important piece on the board, you might find his movement to be rather lacking, in that it's limited to only one square. His wife, the Queen, is much more powerful, in fact being the most powerful piece available in vanilla chess. She can move any number of squares, in any direction, so long as her path is fully unblocked.
Bishops are the King's right-hand men, trusted to give him advice, both religious and tactical. I wanted to give them a sort of "scholarly" look because of this, hence the glasses. Bishops can move diagonally, for as many squares as they desire. This allows them to sneak around the board quickly and quietly, but it also restricts their movement to only half of the squares on the board, specifically all of the ones of the color they started the game on.
Knights are the face of chess for many players. Their unique horse shape stands out among the others, who look more like ornate pillars or columns. However, at the time, I couldn't figure out how to model a horse, and I wasn't about to just put a horse head on a regular clay figure, so I made the knights human instead, which is just as well considering that the knight is the person ON the horse, not the horse itself. I also had the dilemma of how to handle their armor, since it's all shining and silver. To compensate, I made both their cape and lance team-colored, so you can see which side they're on from either side of the table. Knights move two squares orthogonally, and then a third square perpendicular to the first direction they moved. Uniquely, they can also jump directly to their destination square without having to worry about pieces blocking them.
Did you know? When chess was first invented, the rooks represented charioteers, and were the most powerful piece on the board since they were the only ones who could move any number of squares. At some point, though, people decided that the rook should instead represent a castle. I tried making chariots to represent the rook in this set but quickly found that it was still too difficult, so I just made them castles as well. Rooks can move any number of squares orthogonally (forward, backward or sideways.)
The Pawns. Numerous, but low-ranking. Truly, a metaphor for the common man. They sacrifice themselves selflessly for their king, despite outnumbering him eight to one. Legend has it that the reason two pawns standing face-to-face will never kill each other is because they finally get a good look at who they are, the person they've become, by allowing their king to sway them into this war. Pawns move one square directly forward, but can move two squares forward if they have not already moved yet this game. Uniquely, they capture diagonally forward instead of the same way they move. A pawn that reaches the other end of the board can promote into a more powerful piece, usually a queen.
SHADOW WIZARD MONEY GANG, WE LOVE CASTING SPELLS!
Now we're getting into non-standard pieces! The Wizard comes from a variant called Omega Chess. (His Omega Chess rendition is represented by a crescent moon, but c'mon, you can't show me a piece called the Wizard and NOT expect me to make him look like the wizardiest wizard who ever wizarded. Wizards can either make a (3, 1) leap, meaning three squares along one axis and one square along another, OR they can step one square diagonally. In either case, they, like the Bishop, are color-bound.
