Chest of Colors forum

hey hey guys,

After this summer I wanted to surprise a really close and good friend of mine with one half of a chessgame made out of miniatures. Kinda as display. (Maybe the year afterward I can paint up the other half) I'm not sure if I go through with it, as I don't know how much it will cost in the end. But since he's basically my best friend and he has helped me through a lot of difficult periods, I wanted to do something special.
I'm allready trying to figure out what mini's to use. I can't really decide though. So I wondered if you guys have some ideas for what to use.
I especially need a figure for:

- a king
- a queen
- knights
- towers.

He really likes evil or undead stuff, or samurai/oriental typed minis. Sci-fi or fantasy makes no difference. I prefer mini's of some bigger manufacturers as they are a bit easier to come by. (PP, Rackham, GW, Corvus Belli (infinity)

Any help is more than welcome

Thanx in advance

Tomaz,

I was thinking about this idea long time ago, I would use High Elf and Dark Elf.

They have both king and queen (Everqueen), the only issue I have not figured out yet are the knights. I was thinking to use the knights to up lift their front legs and make the base become square like, but still kind of hard on the pose.

Man, please give me your ideas if you have any, hahahaha

Do you have a theme already for the pawns and such? If going with an undead/skeletal theme,GW Tomb Kings - tomb Queen and Tomb King Body #2 would work and use Reaper skeleton warriors for the pawns. Knights could be GW skeletal calvary with some conversion work to have the horses rearing. Liche priests from I think Rakham for the bishops. Pillars of pain from Reaper for the castle/towers.

I did a chess set using 40K when I first got back into painting miniatures back in 2000. I used ultra marines with a SOB cannoness as the Queen and Marenus Calgar(sp) as the king(I know, I know ;P ) for white. Used multiple chaos nurgle marines for pawns, raptors for knights, Fabius Bile for King, a converted Ahrimin with a female head for the queen. Terminators for the bishops (or could be castles/towers) and I can't remember what I used for the castles/towers, for the back. Could send you some pics if interested. I had started on a necron vs. Orks, but never finished that one.

Mike

BTW Hosea's idea of High and Dark elves sounds pretty kool too.

Mike

I'd hesitate to mix lines like Rackham and GW... the difference in look, feel, size, etc. would probably not lend itself to a unified feel/look.

I think for pure "range of available models" you should look at Reaper. They even have a "mini locator" tool on their Web site that lets you specify all sorts of criteria to find things in their range. Plus the price is pretty good for their minis.

Good luck with it.

Greenskins chess set

Pawns - goblins
king - ork boss
queen - kiakara
knights - wolf/boar riders, squig hoppers,
towers - trolls, ogres, black orcs with heavy armour
bishops - fanatics

I agree with LE about mixing mini lines and it was my mistake in that I meant reaper for the liche priests. You very well could build an entire chess set from reaper miniatures.

Let us know how it goes.

Mike

You could go for the gwra LOTR range but I could understand why you wouldnt want to use that!
yeah would just go for gw models cause they have the full army's , mm you could also go 40k?

thanx for the suggestions guys
I was looking for some undead. skeletons as pawns, vampires as king and queen, maybe wolves as bishops, and some sort of mounted graveguard as knights (thinking of Allan C's knight ) Problem is that I don't like the GW undead miniatures. The skeletons are ugly IMO. And the vampires aren't that great either.

So I looked into reaper and remembered judas bloodspire, I think he would be great as king

Click to see full-sized image

maybe the crypt bats as towers??

Click to see full-sized image

and crypt wraith as bishop?

Click to see full-sized image


I'm not sure though. Still need to look into it a little more. Plus without a credit card it's pretty hard to get reaper stuff
I think I'll browse through the GW stuff again too.

@ Django: I prefer fantasy for a chess game, but as I said before, fantasy or sci-fi makes no difference. If you have an idea, please post it

All right then - all-reaper undead chess set
Sorry for not giving links ToMaZ. I'm preparing a barbecue for friends and don't have a lot of time.
Just use the numbers to search models in reaper's online store.

King - 14016. Judas is a good choice.

Queen - 14131 - Elsabeth is my fav female vamp. You might want to take a look at 14017 Naomi or 2986 Necromancer - they both got bats, what would go well with...

Knights - crypt bats 14009 and 14010. Winhs would nicely justify knights' weird jumping move They do not look very undead, but have gravestones on bases

Bishops - 14053 Banshee and 14183 Ghost. Both are female ethereal models so there should be no problems with differing them from other chess pieces.

Towers - you could go for undead constructs 2984 (2 models in a blister). Alternatively - 14003 and 2849 (can't find this one, number goes to an Elf, sorry - LE) are both liches with scythes.

Pawns - 14101, 14137, 14075 are all skeletons. 4 models per blister, so you would need 2 of those.

If you decide to choose reaper stuff and have problems with getting it - pm me.

added links to pics - LE