Vampires & Werewolves set

So far, I've been using a range of different materials for the chess sets and boards I have made myself over the years. But it suddenly dawned on me that there is one 'material' I have never made use of: light.

While thinking about how I could use light to enhance a chess set, I stumbled across a 'vampires & werewolves' set on the www. Prices varied widely, and I managed to get a new set for a reasonable price.

The set on its own is already very nice, with the pieces of the vampire and werewolf armies well made from a type of resin, and with lots of detail.

This set was absolutely perfect for what I had in mind, and, I'll give it away now, it turned out exactly as I had envisioned.

First, I got myself two strings of LED xmas lights, green and red.

Then, I taped the lights under the white squares of the board, half of them green, half red. That left four pairs of lights to be attached to the four 'ruins' carrying the board.

Big moment: will switching on the lights give me what I had in mind?

It most surely did, so time to put the pieces back on the board!

The effect of the lights really creates a spooky atmosphere, green really fitting with vampires, and red with werewolves.

As I said above, I'm really pleased this came out the way I had envisioned it. Because the lights are under the white squares, they appear much more like a glow than single light points, sickly green in the vampire half, aggressive red in the werewolf half. The extra lights on the 'ruins' add to the atmosphere, resembling torches or beacons.

And to give you a better idea of what it looks like in a dark room, here's a brief video:

Of course, the set can be used to play chess according to FIDE rules, but there's a much more appropriate variant: Werewolf chess!

Middle Eastern set

Saw this heavy stone set on eBay, in very good condition. There was no information as to its origins, but I liked the design of the pieces, so I took a punt and won the bidding. After posting the picture on a few chess collectors groups on Facebook, it was suggested that the set might be Middle Eastern in origin. One poster suggested possibly Indian, though that was refuted by another poster.

The set came without a board, and not long after getting it, I got this nice marquetry board. Lots of little pieces of wood!

As before, I posted the picture in a few chess collectors groups, and the suggestion was Syrian or Turkish.

So I had a likely Middle Eastern set, and a board probably from the same general region .... why not put them together?

Even though the board and set do not belong together by design, I do feel they really fit together nicely.

Of course, the set can be used to play FIDE chess. But given it's likely origin, I might just as well consider it a set for playing the predecessor of FIDE chess: Shatranj. The pieces are the same in both variants; it's just the moves of several pieces (especially the firz and alfil, the ancestors of the modern queen and bishop, respectively) that are different.

"Terracotta Warriors" set

Saw an unusual xiangqi (Chinese chess) set for very little on eBay, and couldn't resist. The board was basically a rolled-up square of faux leather, and, to make it more of a physical board, I flattened it and glued it to a piece of plywood.

What was unusual in this set was the shape of the pieces. Normally, xiangqi pieces are basically discs, with the name of the pieces written on them in Chinese characters. Have a look at the xiangqi set for which I made a board long ago to see what I mean.

The set I got off eBay has no discs, but three-dimensional pieces, in the style of the terracotta army.

The pieces are made from some sort of resin. The dark pieces are stained dark brown ...

... whereas the light pieces are off-white, stained such as to resemble ivory.

Although it's quite a neat little set (certainly for the price I paid), to me it just feels odd. I used to play xiangqi quite a lot many years ago, and I'm very used to seeing the pieces on the board as discs with Chinese characters. Having three-dimensional figurines as pieces instead makes it harder for me to see patterns, lines of attack, etc. Guess an experienced player of FIDE chess would find it equally strange playing with discs bearing the pieces' symbols!