And why not make it a BIG chess set?
So, here I present my (nearly) completed chess board and pieces. The board measures 89 by 89 studs, the king pieces are 20 bricks high.
I created black and red pieces rather than the traditional black and white because the various sloped pieces required for the figures are only easily available in black and red.
The final decision to create the chess set was made once I figured out how to create the board. You might think that the board would be the easiest part, but I wanted the board to be smooth so that the bottom of the figures did not stick to any studs. The obvious solution to this, trying to get a lot of black and red tile LEGO plates, turns out to be prohibitively expensive (imagine trying to track down 800 2x2 tiles of both red and black colors -- ha!).
Thanks to the exactness of LEGO bricks, however, I found my solution: each board square was to be 10 studs in width. Since a LEGO brick's height/width ratio is exactly 6:5, I simply constructed square 'walls' 10 studs wide and 8 bricks tall. Capping the top row of bricks with a single row of tiles of the appropriate color would create a perfect square that was equivalent to 10 by 10 studs in each dimension if I simply laid it on its side. While this would still require a few tiles per square (tiles that I'm still waiting to receive -- 'nearly complete'), the new requirement is only one 1x8 and one 1x2 per square instead of 25 2x2's; much more feasible.
I then decided to accent the board with a single-stud rows of yellow bricks which acts as a grid to hold all of the reclining squares.
All in all I was quite pleased with the ingenuity.
Once I finish the board off with the tiles, I'm considering builing the board into an actual table that will be self standing... but that will take a lot of bricks for the legs... bricks I think I may want to use on other projects.
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