Homemade Musketeer Chess Set

Each player will play with the usual 16 chess pieces + 2 new pieces, the new pieces are identical for both players. The choice of the new pieces is an agreement: white chooses the first piece and then black chooses the second piece.
There are 10 musketeer pieces: Leopard, Hawk, Chancellor, Archbishop, Elephant, Unicorn, Cannon, Dragon, Fortress and Spider.
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red-rodent
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Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2019 9:38 pm

Homemade Musketeer Chess Set

Post by red-rodent » Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:04 pm

I love Musketeer Chess, and probably have too much time on my hands. The pieces are beautiful but it has been a very long time in waiting for additional new designs. With that in mind, and inspired by Zied and the Chinese version of Chess/Xiangqi (another game I am more fond of than I am good at), I created Xiangqi-style Musketeer pieces. They are cheap to make, being wooden counters rather than 3D figural pieces. This also makes them rather easy to carry, and very robust (my Elephant pieces have each lost a tusk since I started using them a while back).

I now have 40 Musketeer Chess pieces, a couple of which are my own design, other slightly modified in appearance from the icons produced in Zied's Board Painter tool, but not greatly. Because white doesn't really work with label printing and stickering onto wood, I have imitated Xiangqi and used black and red as the colours of each side. Some pieces are brand new, will post their move sets a bit later.
IMG_0016a.jpg
IMG_0016a.jpg (225.47 KiB) Viewed 14467 times
Piece names running from left to right, top to bottom:
1) Amazon, 2) Archbishop, 3) Archer, 4) Axeman, 5) Bear, 6) Bombardier, 7) Bull, 8) Cannon, 9) Catapult, 10) Chameleon

11) Champion, 12) Chancellor, 13) Dragon, 14) Elephant, 15) Fortress, 16) Gorilla, 17) Griffin, 18) Guard, 19) Hawk, 20) Hippo

21) Jester, 22) Kangaroo, 23) Leopard, 24) Lion, 25) Mammoth, 26) Musketeer, 27) Oryx, 28) Phoenix, 29) Rhino, 30) Scythe

31) Siege Engine, 32) Squirrel, 33) Tiger, 34) Tower, 35) Trebuchet, 36) Unicorn, 37) Warpig, 38) Wizard, 39) Wolf, 40) Zebra
Last edited by red-rodent on Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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jerome
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Re: Homemade Musketeer Chess Set

Post by jerome » Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:35 pm

looks great ! very pleasing to see drawings I made on wood pieces :)

It was a solution I already thought about for some games to have them in 3D : display the 2D icons on a generic 3D wood bases as we do in Jocly Xiangqi. It spares a lot of time in pieces modeling...

red-rodent
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Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2019 9:38 pm

Re: Homemade Musketeer Chess Set

Post by red-rodent » Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:04 pm

You did a great job Jerome. They tend to keep with the standard Chess symbols you see in books, you know, with the hollowed out eye and side perspective. I especially like your work with the Dragon (new one, actual dragon), the Rhino and the Zebra. Traditional in appearance, but new. The pieces pictured above are far more your work than mine.

I think there is a gap in the market for non-chinese Chinese Chess pieces, if the pieces had Western symbols printed/carved into them rather than chinese characters, the game might be more accessible to non-East Asians. I have no problem with them (lived in China for 2 years) but they can really shock first timers.

I also wondered if these styles of Chess pieces, flat, image based discs rather than 3D figures, would be cheaper to manufacture (it certainly was easier and cheaper for me than 3D printing or wood carving!).

musketeerchess
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Re: Homemade Musketeer Chess Set

Post by musketeerchess » Mon Jul 26, 2021 8:07 pm

red-rodent wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:04 pm
I love Musketeer Chess, and probably have too much time on my hands. The pieces are beautiful but it has been a very long time in waiting for additional new designs. With that in mind, and inspired by Zied and the Chinese version of Chess/Xiangqi (another game I am more fond of than I am good at), I created Xiangqi-style Musketeer pieces. They are cheap to make, being wooden counters rather than 3D figural pieces. This also makes them rather easy to carry, and very robust (my Elephant pieces have each lost a tusk since I started using them a while back).

I now have 40 Musketeer Chess pieces, a couple of which are my own design, other slightly modified in appearance from the icons produced in Zied's Board Painter tool, but not greatly. Because white doesn't really work with label printing and stickering onto wood, I have imitated Xiangqi and used black and red as the colours of each side. Some pieces are brand new, will post their move sets a bit later.

IMG_0016a.jpg

Piece names running from left to right, top to bottom:
1) Amazon, 2) Archbishop, 3) Archer, 4) Axeman, 5) Bear, 6) Bombardier, 7) Bull, 8) Cannon, 9) Catapult, 10) Chameleon

11) Champion, 12) Chancellor, 13) Dragon, 14) Elephant, 15) Fortress, 16) Gorilla, 17) Griffin, 18) Guard, 19) Hawk, 20) Hippo

21) Jester, 22) Kangaroo, 23) Leopard, 24) Lion, 25) Mammoth, 26) Musketeer, 27) Oryx, 28) Phoenix, 29) Rhino, 30) Scythe

31) Siege Engine, 32) Squirrel, 33) Tiger, 34) Tower, 35) Trebuchet, 36) Unicorn, 37) Warpig, 38) Wizard, 39) Wolf, 40) Zebra
Hi
You really did an awesome job.


Check this link, all the new pieces are there:

https://www.ebay.com/str/thechessshopofnorthcarolina

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