Warhammer Chess Set, ideas anyone

[TreborRIs]

So, I have this idea of using only GW Warhammer figures to build a chess set.

But I\'m stuck..which army to use for either side? Or could you do a do a \"good\" vs \"Evil\" type of thing?

And then the individual pieces...Of course they would all have to fit on a single model base or at least all on the same size.

And there are some models that make perfect sense in for a particular piece like:
Bishop = Warrior Priest
Pawns = Goblins/Bret peasants etc
King/Queen = Lots of heros to pick from

But then you\'ve got these:
Knights = this one is tough if I go with the single troop base, unless you go with an unmounted one.
Rook = No ideas on this one.

And then I\'ve got to pick a theme for the painting/conversion.

So, any ideas out there?

TreborRis

 

[mud duck]

Rooks= some type of warmachine (maybe from the epic line) or a totem/banner thingie. I\'m thinking some thing round the bits that you get in the latest version of warhammer for the orcs. Or something with a ton of snottings

Knights= you could do something like most chess sets that I\'ve seen and just go with the horses head and the upper body of the knight coming out of a carved base. Or have the horse/mount rearing up to get it in the space needed.

 

[skeeve]

Rooks - blood bowl trophies

 

[Roger Bunting]

For the knights, you could use Empire Greatswords, closest thing for a model on a normal sized base.

 

[DaN]

Rooks - Epic towers
For Bishops you could also use wizards

 

[TreborRIs]

DaN, I like the wizards as Bishops. Can\'t find the Epic towers.

Roger, thanks. I think the old Bret knight on foot might also work.

Skeeve, the tropies could work. I\'ll have to see one in person to make sure.

Mud duck, I figured the horse head thing would be too generic looking...not enough \"Warhammer\" in it. But I hadn\'t thought of doing 1/2 the model. I could see that working with most of the mounted troops.

Now that you mention the totems, I wonder if the campaign markers would work?

 

[PegaZus]

Don\'t know much about the WH series, but wouldn\'t, er, a knight be good for a knight?

Had to look at the GW site a bit. Guess there\'s not a lot of unmounted knights. Could always take a regular militia guy and throw on some GS plates for armor.

 

[OrkyDave]

I was going to do a similar thing for dwarves and goblins. Using a dwarf lord for king, female dwarf thane queen, runepriests for bishops, iron breakers for knights and slayers for the rooks. They don\'t have to look like towers, just as long as you know what they are. There are plenty of other core/ special and rare selections to choose from too if none of these float your boat.

The Night Goblins would have Skarsnik for king, Gobbla the giant squig for queen, shamans for bishops, squig hoppas for knights and fanatics for rooks.

There are enough characterful generic metal minis in these 2 lines to give the pawns character too.

I was toying with the idea of having the lord as the queen (the most powerful piece on the board) and a standard bearer as king (as historically armies protected the standard at all costs and would never let it fall into enemy hands, if the standard falls, checkmate!)

I also chose these armies as I wanted to model the board as an underground dwarven hall with pillars on eitherside. Dwarves and goblins have a history of fighting and a fair bit of this happens underground, so this would have fitted in with the character. This was going to be my open category entry in the UK golden demons this year, but time dictated otherwise!

Whatever you do though, avoid the idea of mixing epic scale, such as towers or horsies)and 28mm minis like the plague. Asthetically it will look a trillion times better if all the pieces are they same scale.

Hope this has helped, and hope you don\'t pillage too many of my thoughts! lol! the warhammer world is a big enough universe for this to work with any armies (40k or fantasy) with a bit of thought and imagination.

Hope you get further than I did though, and remember to keep us posted!

 

[Ogrebane]

Im in the process of making a set for each army. I have the dwarves and gobbos about sorted just need some warmachines.

Also the hieght of the bases should help to tell who is who. And A half horse with a rider on it is my idea of a knight but I am stealing the Squig and fanatics idea.

Good luck.

 

[freakinacage]

i was going to do it with undead and high elves but couldn\'t be arsed after the first 3 skellies!!

you could always do an empire/brettonian army against itself but raised. always liked the idea of an army fighting it\'s undead equivalent

 

[Talion]

I made one from GamesWorkshop LOTR minis..........but screwed up the chess board so just got the pieces left.

 

[PegaZus]

You know, I just thought of something. You don\'t HAVE to do the figures as the appropriate pieces. What if instead you made the bases dictate the piece?

Something simple would be to go buy two sets of travel chess (stay with me here). Probably could pick them up a discount store cheap. Get the one that has the little plastic pieces that fit into holes, not magnets, so they\'d be easy to attach to the corners of the base. You\'d need two sets because you\'d probably want to do the little mini piece at each corner, thus you and your opponent could see what the piece actually was. You could then be free to do whatever figure you\'d like.

Now, you might not need to do that even. If you are good at creative basing, you might do the piece outline as the designation. For example, basing a figure on a piece of rock-painted cork shaped like a rook or a knight. That way if you knew what to look for, you\'d know what the piece would be. From board level, you wouldn\'t really notice anything, but from the two player\'s perspective, you\'d see the base outlining what piece it was.

Anyway, two thoughts fer ya.

And now I want to do a set as well! Not ANOTHER project. lol

 

[flamingdog]

Makes sense to me to key the pieces to their battlefield role. Rooks would be best represented by a cannon of some kind, bishops by archers, knights by... knights, pawns by general infantry, and king and queen are pretty self-explanatory. I would make the king a wizard since he\'s extremely important but physically not that powerful, and the queen some kind of bada*s valkyrie.

 

[Logan]

Bruce Hirst on his website (Hirstarts.com) shows how he\'s made a Castle Chessboard using pieces from his plaster moulds.
He\'s then based the miniatures on some column plinths that he\'s cast.
Here\'s a couple of pics.

Not suggesting you do this but it shows what can be done, might give you some inspiration and is definitely more fuel to the fire.

 

[demonherald]

Depends how far you want to go and what size bases you are doing everything on... I generally look at the army books and use the trrop categories from there so you have lords for kings and queens , heroes for bishops and knights trrops for pawns etc....
scenery on the bases can help clarify in chess terms any that aren\'t 100% clear.

 

[Beefy]

You could use night goblins as your pawns but then your are quite stuck with what to choose as your knights ect.

 

[pez5767]

Fate!?

WOW!?

So, i\'m actually just finishing up a chess set for my dad who is going through Cancer treatments. He came up with the idea that i do a chess set years ago, and i always thought, \"yeah that\'s a good idea, i\'ll do that someday.\" It\'s amazing how much cancer can make you think someday is today... anyway.

I ended up going with a World Of Warhammer, Storm of Chaos, Good vs. Evil type of theme. Basically i wanted some good vs. evil to make the sides clearly identifiable.

Here is my chess set line-up:

EVIL (Black and purple color theme)
king= Archeon on foot
queen= Dark elf Sorceress
bishop= Collector\'s choas sorcerer shreve (book and torch guy, bishop = pointy hat like the chess piece)
Knight= Bestigor 1 (looks like a classic knight-chess-piece horse head curve on this one.)
Rook= Arcane Architecture Column 1 (skull pillar)
pawns= last edition multi-part plastic night goblins

GOOD (Green and white color theme)
King= Valten on foot
queen= Bretonnian Damsel on foot
Bishop= lothern sea gaurd 8 (again Classic bishop pointy head)
Knight= Bretonian knight of the realm on foot. (he\'s a knight...duh?)
Rook= Arcane Architecture Column 4 (classical pillar)
Pawn= Classic Dwarf Clansman w axe 2.

All of the pawns have a 50/50 color field on a small round shield.

I\'ll try to get some pics up of it soon.

Hope this helps you out, Good luck!

 

[Temporary Sanity]

I\'m in the process (even after 2 years) of making a chess set for my older brother using Rackham figs.

Griffins for White, Undead for Black.

Undead centaurs for the knights, and the Thallion riders for the white knights, special characters for the king/queen. Templars for the pawns, inquisitors for bishops, yadda yadda, you get the idea. Now if only I can find time to finish it before his 50th birthday (he\'s 35).

I\'d love to make the Hirst chess board, but with a baby now, I don\'t have that kinda disposable income anymore.

 

[Theomar Pius]

I started a project like this last summer, even have the board all carved out, as it would primarily be a terrain piece.
I was thining the most effective way would be two Brettonian armies, one black, one white. That would make it much less confusing for the players, if each of your bishops for example, looked the same. It could get confusing (as if chess isn\'t) with all of the different pieces.

 

[custard]

*little of topic* I can just imagine all the rules lawyers stating crap about rules as written and all that malarkey.

You could maybe have the height of the base according to the piece aswell. e.g. standard slotta for pawns, 1/2\" for rooks, 1\" for knights, etc etc