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The wife has expressed interest in learning chess, but being the insane git that I am, I can't just play a regular game of chess with regular chess pieces (boring...). I have some Fantasy/AoS minis sitting around, and wanted to brainstorm chess "army lists" with like-minded folks. I'll be making a custom chess board with grass and stone checkerboard.

I have plenty of orc minis, and a handful of Undead minis (most everything in my undead "army list" below, anyway). I would love to see other folks ideas for other Warhammer Chess Sets.

Because of board size constraints, I don't want to use any huge minis, so I don't want to consider using any model on anything larger than a current cavalry base, and want to keep minis to currently available plastics.
As far as the Queen piece goes, I'm not concerned with them being female, as the Queen, to me, just needs to be the most powerful piece/right hand to the King.

So, some Warhammer Chess "army list" ideas:

UNDEAD CHESS ARMY LIST
King: plastic Necromancer
Queen: Wight King with blade and shield
Pawns: plastic skeleton set
Knights: Black Knights or Hex Wraiths
Rooks: Spirit Hosts (around haunted mausoleums)
Bishops: Banshees

ORC/ORRUK CHESS ARMY LIST
King: ?? I would say the IronJaw Warboss but I actually want the orc "leader" to get used and bash heads as a Queen piece would...
Queen: Orruk IronJaw warboss? He needs a smaller base...
Pawns: orc boyz
Knights: orc boar riders (or those Gore Gruntas or whatever they are called)
Rooks: Orc Ard Boyz/Black Orcs or those new Orruk armored Brutes
Bishops: Orc Shamans

Other ideas? Would really like to know your thoughts on this!

While I certainly understand the appeal of a beautiful chess set, chess pieces also need to be functional, and easy to recognise at a glance. That's one of the issues that often puts me off "novelty" chess sets: they tend to have ambiguous pieces, which can actually get in the way of a game, rather than enrich it. I think that's something you should keep in mind, especially if your wife is only learning.

That said, I've often toyed with the idea of making my own chess set (probably incorporating miniatures). I quite enjoy the idea of The Grim Reaper playing chess (like in The Seventh Seal), so if it were me, I think I'd almost certainly go with skeletons. I was thinking bare bones for white, and black robes for black.

Alternatively, Mantic has a game called Loka, which uses miniatures as fantasy chess pieces. So if making them yourself isn't important, there are some ready made ones (which are actually quite nice): http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/loka.html

I don't see any reason why you couldn't. I always wanted to make a WHFB chess set myself. Specifically chaos warriors vs empire.

Archaon as King, Valkia would make for an appropriate Queen, chaos knights as Knights, sorcerers as Bishops, warriors as Rooks (or maybe possessed, chosen, etc), and marauders as Pawns. Boom; easily recognizable as what they are to ANY player familiar with Fantasy.

Undead I'd suggest Vlad, Isabella, Necromancers, Grave Guard, Black (or Blood) Knights, and basic skellies. Should be pretty easy to determine what is what.

The hardest part is the Knights; remember, all board spaces are a certain size, so the base for each should fit that size. Prepare to sculpt horses rearing up, if possible.

Queens can't always be female, so some exceptions will have to be made. But you can literally make any Warhammer army into a chess team. I'd be happy to help with suggestions and ideas, as this is always something I wanted to do myself.

Thanks for your input, guys.

Smacks - yes, you're totally right about making sure things are clear. I was thinking of putting small marks on the backs of the bases to help with memory (R for Rook, B = Bishop, etc) or making special magnetic base additions to be used for chess so that those marks aren't visible if I wanted to play Kinggs of War or AoS with those painted miniatures.

I did see that Loka chess, and looked interesting. Part of the appeal of this idea is that I have a lot of the minis I'd need already, and it cuts down on cost!

timetowaste85 - I like the Chaos chess idea, that would make a striking set. I'd have to get the old Archaon on his horse, as much as I like the big dragon thing, it would be too big, but I think that's what you were implying.

I think I might make the checkerboard squares a good size so that the Knight bases can extend over the border of the squares a small bit, but it should be okay since the majority of the other pieces would be on 25mm or 32mm bases.

Any other chess army suggestions would be welcome! I'd like to do Dwarves but I don't have much knowledge of that model range.

If you wanted, there is an Archaon model on foot too; I actually have two, although one is missing his sword. PM me if you'd like, I'd be willing to toss off the one without the sword, if you'd be keen on proxying his sword. I'd cut you a really reasonable deal with him missing the sword, btw. Then you wouldn't have to worry about hunting down the mounted one.

Dwarves I think should have The White Dwarf as king, Gotrek as queen, runelords as bishops, thanes as rooks, rangers as knights, and basic warriors as pawns. Or, you could go more shooty and have the new fire gun models as rooks, engineers as bishops, quarrelers or gunners as pawns. They have no actual cavalry models, but rangers being the most mobile options they have (or miners!!) give you some choices.

Rackham had a fun "half of a chess set" unit: http://s914.photobucket.com/user/RackhamMiniatures/media/Dwarfs%20-%20Mid-Nor/Mid-NorClan.jpg.html

That might give you ideas how to differentiate individual units. For undead a female vampire might work even better as a queen and for orc pawns a few goblins might work even better. If you want to use magnetic bases then you could use little plinths (like a thumb thickness high) with felt underneath so they can be moved more easily, don't scratch the board, and are removed for wargaming. And you could add names to them for easy identification.

High Elves might work like this:

King: A non-mage lord character or old infantry Alarielle
Queen: The old Alarielle, or a Handmaiden of the Everqueen (then Alarielle could be the King like mentioned above)
Bishops: Mages or Great Eagles (the diagonal movement can feel swoosh-y)
Knights: Any of the cavalry (depending on what flavour you want to go for)
Rooks: White Lions (for castling, they are bodyguards after all) or Repeater Bolt Throwers if you want something that's feels more stationary
Pawns: High Elf Spearmen or Lothern Sea Guard

The one problem I could see with this is that they have pointy spears and grabbing them from the top could be painful (or going for another piece near them). Dwarves would be a benefit in that regard but they are small and heavily armoured (they all look the same if you don't know what to look for).

King: Runesmith, King or Lord
Queen: Dwarf King or Lord (or if you want to use these as Kings then there's that one old female hero too)
Bishops: A regular Runesmith or engineer
Knights: No idea, a Gyrocopter?
Rooks: Ironbreaker (very heavily armoured), Hammerer (King's bodyguard) or a war machine
Pawns: Slayers? They are at least lightly armoured and would look different from the back line

They have also some other elite infantry types but they can look similar (heavy or even heavier armour, long beard or really long beard, shield and something to hit enemies with). There are also the rangers and engineers

Maybe look at Reaper for a female vampire/lich and a female orc/ogre?

I feel if you're playing chess the queen should be a woman.

Maybe find a fat orc/ogre as a king to show why it's not out cracking heads?

Thanks again for your comments, guys. I'm still pondering over this, and Kyoto's mention of the Queen really wanting be be a female figure made me start thinking.

I am leaning towards the chess set being Undead vs Wood Elves/Wanderers with some treemen/Sylvaneth support. I was considering Orcs/Orruks, but I like the contrast of predominantly male Death side vs. predominantly female elves of Life side.

What do you think of these ideas...

Undead Chess set

*King- Wight King with Tomb Blade
*Queen - Tomb Banshee (maybe with an added crown)
*Bishops - Necromancers (one the vampire counts version, the other a battle mage wizard deathmage) - OR one a Necromancer, the other a Cairn Wraith (really want a Cairn Wraith in there somehow, not sure if that's confusing to have the Necromancer and the Wraith as the same kind of piece)
*Rooks- Spirit Hosts around mausoleums or gravestones
*Knights- Black Knights or Hexwraiths (still not sure)
*Pawns - skeleton warriors

Elves of Life Chess Set

*King - Warden Prince (or whatever he's called with the falcon on his arm) or Glade Lord
*Queen - Shadowdancer? Spellweaver?
*Bishops - not sure... Maybe 2 Spellweavers if the Queen is a Shadowdancer?
*Rooks - dryads/branchwraiths/etc on a tree stump
*Knights - Sisters of the Thorn or whatever they're called
*Pawns - Glade Guard

I'm thinking the undead side would have rotten trees and branches on some bases to contrast the living trees on the elves side.

Thoughts?

The Queen does not have to be female. It just needs to be the right-hand man (or woman) of the king. In a lot of languages, including the original Persian, the piece is actually called the Vizier.

So for Undead, a Necromancer as king and wight king as queen would be very thematic. Of course, for recognisability of pieces to English-language speakers what you have above would work best. Though you would need to find a way to make the Black Knights/Hexwraiths fit on a chess square. Also, the knight really should be smaller than the rook, queen and king. Maybe you could use Dire Wolves instead? Should be easily recognisable since the knight actually is a horse rather than an armoured rider.
I would not use a Cairn Wraiths as bishops because they kinda look too similar to the queen, being the same size and such. Necromancers also look more bishop-y.


My list for High Elves:
King: Lord on foot
Queen: Alarielle
Rooks: Phoenix Guard or Swordmasters
Bishops: Mages
Knights: Shadow Warriors (they look jumpy, like ninjas)
Pawns: Sea Guard or Spearmen

Hmm. Thanks Iron, that's an interesting fact. Good to know. I was leaning towards that idea initially, as a Necromancer as King made thematic sense, since once he goes down the army would crumble (literally), and something like a Wight King would be the most powerful piece on the board/battlefield.

I hadn't really noticed until recently that the pieces had a scale of heights to correspond with their hierarchy. Perhaps I have the King and Queen on higher platforms/bases to make them visually higher, without altering their size much. Part of what I like is that the knight piece plays into the idea of mounted combat, so even if they are physically bigger than any other piece I'm not too bothered. They will be on larger bases, I just need to make the chess board to accommodate their size. The pieces will likely have small plinths that magnetize to the bottom of the standard GW bases. Then i can use them to game outside of chess. The plinths would have their standard chess names or initials on the back to keep things clear.

I might go back to the Cairn Wraith and Banshee as being the Bishops, then, since they do look similar after a fashion.

I'm