Lord of the Rings Chess Game

[Malebolgia]

http://www.s1161342.fmnsedu.rug.nl/

Finally finished...a chess game me and my girlfriend made for my dad...the pictures and text explain it all :)

[green stuff]

Great accomplishment :)! I'm sure your dad will love this.

My only gripe would be on some of the choices you made for the pieces ... Gandalf and Saruman as queens ??? Must be the robes I guess :P.

[supervike]

That is pretty phenomenal....I especially like the 'dark' side. The balrogs as the rooks are very cool.

Checkmate!

[gi6ers]

Gandalf and Saruman as queens ??? Must be the robes I guess :P.

I can confirm that Gandalf (or at least Ian McKellen) is most definitely a queen.

Nice work there Malebolgia!

[green stuff]

I can confirm that Gandalf (or at least Ian McKellen) is most definitely a queen.
Yeah, there is that too, but the Galadriel and Celeborn models are just screaming to used as Queen and King pieces IMHO. The dark side would be tougher to figure out though. In that case, the Saruman/Gandalf match up does seem more logic I guess.

[Ritual]

@Cédric
You'd also have to take the characters' roles within the story into consideration as to who are the best picks for each piece. In that sense Gandalf and Saruman are pretty good choices, since they are both characters who has great influence over the actions of both parties in the struggle.

[green stuff]

True, but for some wierd reason I would have seen them as towers. They seem more to influence forces than move in all directions.

Anyways, like I said, the end project looks great, I'm just doing some "what if" thinking ;).

[Spacemunkie]

Nah, Gandalf and Saruman would make great bishops.

Excellent job - I bet that was a real labour of love!

[supervike]

Aragorn most definately should have been the KING...Maybe Galadriel as the Queen. Spacemunkie has the Bishops down pat...

[Ritual]

Wouldn't it be quite strange with Aragorn only being able to move one step each turn and basically be of no use? Frodo is much more suited for that task, I'd say.

[Spacemunkie]

It's such a cool thing to do. I've got several chess sets and have always meant to do one with minis. There's a Rackham Mid-Nor box that is crying out to be used as baddies. I just wish they'd do a box for the white pieces.

http://www.rackham-store.com/boutique/images_produits/NMBC01copie.jpg

[supervike]

Egads! Do they sell that AS a chess set?

[vincegamer]

The LOTR set is fantastic. I bet dad was very pleased.

Frodo does make sense as king, for the reasons given.
I also think Saruman and Gandalf make sense as queens. They are very powerful in the story.

I would have had Galadriel and Elrond as white bishops, Faramir and Aragorn as knights, and Gimil and Legolas as rooks.

(oh, I was puzzled by the lack of bishops until I realized you have "rooks" and "towers". Must be a language thing because the rook and tower are alternate names for the same piece in English.)

Of course that's just my take. There are so many variations possible such as going by size and having the pawns all be hobbits, or trying to get all of the fellowship into the back row, or so many other ways.

The black side is harder to work with. The only difference I would have had was have Nazgul on horses as knights, maybe try to work Golum in there somewhere though he's hard to place.

Also, for Bishops, if you didn't worry about scale consistency you could put tiny Olifants (since the earlier, middle-eastern versions of the game the bishop was the "elifant" - now the alfiere(IT), alfil(SP), Läufer(DE), löpare(SW))

[Malebolgia]

Thanks for all the praises guys :)
And the language is indeed scrambled...I looked it up in Google and the website I used said the bishops were rooks...so I have to correct that (rooks > bishop; tower > rook)

And the models were mostly dictated by what I already had...it was already expensive enough, so I wasn't going to invest in too much new models.
But Frodo and Sauron as kings and Gandalf as queen was easy to me. The contrast between Frodo and Sauron is so big, it is extremely cool (and considering the books is the best to me too).
Elrond and Galadriel would have been better as Elves...but I did not have elves. Same goed for 'normal' Nazgul. I bought these guys on ebay (and now I am very happy too...as the painting was a blast).
The hardest choice was the black queen...had to choose between Saruman and the Witchking...in the end I went for Saruman as he was already painted and made a good contrast against Gandalf.