Skull set

Shortly after I got these 'skull' pieces ...

... I stumbled across this 'gothic' chess board ...

... and I thought the board and pieces would go well together.

And then I thought I'd enhance some of the pieces (bishops, knights, queens and kings) a bit by painting parts of them; green and silver on the 'white' pieces, and red and gold on the 'black' pieces.

And this is what the final skull set looks like:

I do feel the partial painting improved them, but you judge for yourself, of course!

Shanghai Arts & Crafts set

Saw this set listed in eBay as a 'Chinese chess set', but clearly it is a set for 'western' chess, not for Xiangqi.

Other than that it is made in China, and that the set is made of wood, I know next to nothing about it, but I liked the design of the pieces, so ...

Shrek set

There are a few Shrek chess sets on the market; this one comes in a tin ...

... and that tin contains a cardboard board, and plastoy pieces.

On the 'villains' side, we see several Kneeling Knights, the Fairy Godmother, Prince Charming, Lord Farquaad, Queen Lillian and King Harold.

On the 'good' side, we have Three Little Pigs, Dragon, Puss in Boots, Donkey, and, obviously, Shrek and Fiona as king and queen.

Kyrgyz set

I know very little about this set. It was listed on eBay as having been bought in Kyrgyzstan, and the design of the pieces doesn't make me doubt that.

The pieces are made of wood, and nicely painted.

It's quite a large set: the king stands 15cm tall.

As I said at the start of this blog post, I know very little about it, so any further information on where and when it was made is very welcome!

Xiangqi set for practice

I was looking for a basic xiangqi set to use for practicing, and found this set made of beechwood.

To help me with learning the Chinese notation of moves, I wrote the Chinese numbers on the files.

So here's the set at the start of a game.

At the moment, I'm working through endgame puzzles from the two volumes of Becoming a Xiangqi Assassin.

If you want to have a go, here are two of these puzzles; red to move and win!