Eurasian chess set

Eurasian chess is a hybrid between Xiangqi (Chinese chess) and Western (FIDE) chess. The pieces, their movement, movement restrictions, and the layout of the board are really sort of halfway between its two 'parents', and it also has a piece (the vao) which isn't part of either, but is inspired by both.

I was keen to create a Eurasian chess set myself. For pieces, I decided to use the caps of certain medicine tubes, because these combine both the flat discs of xiangqi and the three-dimensionality of Western chess pieces. 

I painted the pieces for the two sides silver and gold, with the aim of painting the various pictograms, in blue and red, respectively, on them later.

As to the board, I again wanted to combine playing on the squares (as per Western chess) and playing on the lines (as per xiangqi). I still had some chequerboard pattern self-adhesive vinyl left from when I made a 'westernised' xiangqi set. 

And on this I added lines through the centre of the squares with the use of gold and silver self-adhesive strips. Two colours to highlight the home-halves of each side, which the king is not allowed to leave (similar to the palaces in xiangqi, but less restricted here).

Done this way, the pieces can be said to play on the squares and lines at the same time!

Back to the pieces, they now needed to have the various pictograms painted on them.

And then the board needed to be finished properly, using draught excluder strips to mark the edges of the play area.

Decided to use three strips per side, and it does look good, I think!

Finishing the edges ....

Pieces done, board done, one more thing to do!

Definitely a full set unlike any I've created before. Both the board, with play on the squares as well as the lines, and the pieces, as 'raised discs', combine elements of the main forms of Asian and European chess. Whaddayathink?

'Cheeky Dragons' set

Over the years, I've bought several chess sets from a guy calling himself 'Ogg the Clever' (see here, here, here and also here for a non-chess set). When he added a 'cheeky dragons' set to his line-up, I really wanted them!

And not just 'wanting' ..... I thought those would be perfect for a xiangqi set, and 'Ogg' was very willing to amend the numbers of the various pieces so they would make a full xiangqi set.

The set didn't come with a board, and I felt the black wooden board I've used before would be the perfect match.

Judge for yourself!

Don't you love them?

Modern wooden set

Saw this modern wooden xiangqi set, for not very much, and I really liked it, so ...

Someone must have put some real thought into making a modern wooden board attractive!

The pieces are simple wooden discs, with the usual Chinese writing on them.

Guess I said it already, but I really like the set!

The board actually comes with two sets of pieces: the pieces I showed in the pictures above, and a second set with pictograms rather than Chinese characters.

Dragon cloth set

I've got a few Janggi (Korean chess) sets in the collection: one commercial set for which I made a perspex board, one travel set, and a self-made set for a large Janggi variant: Gwangsanghui. Janggi sets available commercially are few and far between, so when I saw a plastic red and blue set for very little, I got it.

The set didn't come with any board, so I had to make that myself, obviously. After rejecting several ideas, I decided on creating a board from cloth, and adding the 'points' on which the game is played by using plastic gaming chips. Found a nice piece of cloth, with dragons, on the internet.

It took little time to measure out and glue the gaming chips on to the cloth, red chips for most of the points, and green for the 'palaces' (Janggi doesn't have rivers).

Time to put the pieces on the board!

I decided to set up the pieces for Gidoncha Janggi, a variant played in North Korea. In this variant, the rook and elephants/ministers have swapped places.

Aviation chess

Aviation chess was invented in 1913, and played during WW I. In most aspects, this chess variant is identical FIDE chess, but there is one difference: the pawns on the b-file and g-file are replaced by 'aviators'. These 'aviators' fly diagonally, over any number of pieces, to either an empty square, or a square occupied by an enemy piece (which is then captured and replaced). 

As one of my other interests is Spitfires and their history, I decided to adapt Aviation chess slightly by having Spitfires as 'aviators'!

Off eBay, I got a full set of 32 laser cut chess pieces (of course, I don't need four of the pawns) as well as four laser cut Spitfire shapes. They smell really nice as a result of the laser-cutting process!

Then I used two colours of wood stain ('pine' and 'mahogany', respectively) to create the 'white' and 'black' pieces.

I decided to use the board of my Kyrgyz set, as it had the right size squares and also looks relatively old.

So there we go: a Spitfire-inspired set for Aviation chess!

Marble and onyx set

A couple of years ago, I got an incomplete soapstone set plus board for almost nothing. I used some of the pieces as additional pieces for several soapstone sets, but the board remained unusued.

Until I got my hands on a set of 'Mexican' onyx and marble pieces, which came without a board. Seemed to me the soapstone board could well be used for this set!

The pieces themselves are in the 'Aztec' style that regularly pops up on eBay. 

Nothing spectacular, but a nice set to add to the collection, and good that the unused soapstone board has found a purpose.

Mini xiangqi set

Mini xiangqi is a smaller version of xiangqi, invented by Shigenobu Kusumoto in 1973 or 1974. Compared to xiangqi itself, it has no river, no elephants, and no guards. It does still have a palace,  which limits the movement of the king, as it does in xiangqi itself. 

The initial array of the pieces in mini xiangqi is like this:

Why do I bring up this smaller xiangqi variant? Well, some time ago, I got my hands on a wooden xiangqi set, with the pieces similar to, but smaller than those of my varnished set.

Rather than use the paper board provided with the set, or make a board myself, I thought it would be fun to use it for mini xiangqi (simply leave out the elephants and guards) and create a board for that. 

That board consisted of a piece of thin plywood, on which I drew the initial lines.

On the final board, those lines would be made from lollypop sticks ...

... cut to size and glued to the board, which had the edges and palaces covered by a thin layer of pine wood stain.

The board then got two coats of clear glossy varnish.

All that's missing now is the pieces; note the absence of elephants and guards.

I think board and pieces work well together.