Help me with a LotR chess set

Cafe Society
1

So, my current woodcarving project is a chess set. But not just any chess set: I’m carving a Lord of the Rings chess set. So far, I’ve decided on the following lineup:

White:
King: Aragorn*
Queen: Arwen
Rooks: Rivendell* and Minas Tirith
Bishops: Gandalf and Elrond
Pawns: Hobbits

Black:
King: Sauron*
Queen: Shelob*
Rooks: Barad Dur* and Orthanc*
Bishops: Saruman and the Balrog
Knights: Witch-King and Khamul (Ringwraiths)
Pawns: Orcs

There’re three things I still need help with, though…

1: White knights. I feel like I ought to make pieces for Legolas and Gimli, but they don’t really fit in as knights (Gimli, after all, would rather bear a horse than be borne by one). My other choice is Eomer and Eowyn, who are definitely knights, but more minor characters. On the other hand, Eowyn is much more important to the story than Arwen, who I’ve already got assigned.

2: Which hobbits? I’ll have to have Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippen, of course, but who else? Fatty Bolger? Farmer Cotton? Farmer Maggot? Robin Smallburrow? The Gaffer?

3: Distinguishing characteristics. I don’t really have room for too much detail, so I’m going to need to go by somewhat symbolic attributes to distinguish the characters. Sam, for instance, will be carrying his pots and pans, and a coil of rope, whereas Maggot (if I use him) would have mushrooms at his feet. But how do I show Elrond, for instance? Or distinguish the two Ringwraiths?

Any suggestions are welcome.

[sub]* These are the pieces I’ve already started on, so they’re not subject to change[/sub]

2

For the white knights, what about Boromir and Faramir, or alternately, either Boromir or Faramir and Theoden?

Give Elrond a golden circlet around his head. He’s portrayed that was in a lot of LOTR art, and it’s distinguishing. As for the two Ringwraiths, have you considered replacing Khamul with The Mouth of Sauron?

3

Asked a few friends (serious LOTR fans) and got the following -

What about Boromir and Faramir as white knights, or Galadriel and Gandalf as bishops, since they’re the seers. As white pawns, they suggested Roise Cotton, Fatty Bolger, and The Gaffer, since they can be distinguished fairly easily.

For Elrond, you could give him a sceptre (which he hands to Aragorn) and a gold circlet. Distinguishing marks for the Witch King could be a crown and armour, or mount him on a winged steed.

It sounds like a really interesting project. Any chance of seeing pictures of the set on the web when you’ve finished them?

4

The golden circlet would be a good idea, except for the medium. I’m just doing straight woodcarving, not coloring the pieces in any way, so a golden circlet wouldn’t look any different from any other circlet. The scepter is an idea, though.

I really should take pictures of the pieces as I complete them. My camera’s lousy for close-ups, though… I might need to borrow another one.

Boromir and Faramir are more minor than Legolas and Gimli, and still aren’t particularly associated with horses. Besides, it’d be well-nigh impossible to tell them apart. Galadriel might make a reasonable bishop, but I think I like Elrond better.

5

If you want to do just horses for White knights, there’s Bill the pony and Shadowfax.

Where’s Gollum? I think he ought to be a Black bishop or knight.

The Danbury Mint is offering a LOTR chess set.. The choice of characters are pretty similar to your original list.

6

Put Frodo on a shaggy little pony and make him a knight.

7

Put Frodo on Bill. That way he’ll be riding on Sam’s shaggy little pony and thus fulfill all of the Frodo/Sam ‘shippers’ fondest dreams. :smiley:

jayjay

8

Identical, in fact, for black. I rather suspected that I wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea, but I do plan to do a better job of it than they. They made a few major artistic blunders, I think:

First, trying to shoehorn all the major characters into the set. When I’m done with all of the actual pieces, I may decide to carve the rest of the characters, too, but not as chess pieces per se. I mean, after all, if Aragorn is King, then Arwen has to be Queen, and what must one be smoking to make Gimli a bishop?

Second, there seems to be some sort of law that fantasy sculpture must incorporate “crystal” glass balls (calling glass “crystal” is another pet peeve of mine, but I digress). I mean, sure, there was a Palantir in the Tower of the Sun, but was it really protruding out as a major feature of the architecture?

Third, as with every artistic chess set I’ve seen, all of the pawns on a given side are identical. If you can have two different rooks, knights, and bishops, why not pawns as well? Is Frodo not an important enough character, that all hobbits must be lumped together?

9

Ah, I knew I’d get to brag about my too expensive fantasy chess set some day. I bought one from the Franklin Mint years ago, one of those “pay for a piece every two months” deals. The figures were pewter, well made, and… the pawns were all different. It came with a fancy board and had a 40 page booklet that told the story of a kingdom in trouble and how each character fit in. Yeah, they did the crystal ball thing with each piece but most were well incorporated into the style of each character. I bought this set mostly for the pawn thing, I had never seen one before. I hope you’ll put up some photos of each piece and the finished set.

10

Why not put Frodo on Bill the pony, and Gandalf on Shadowfax, and make those your white knights. Then substitute Galadriel for Gandalf as a Bishop (since both she and Elrond hold one of the three Elven rings).

11

Well, Frodo as a knight would spoil the whole pawns=hobbits thing, and besides, he was actually referred to in the book as a pawn. I’m not going to argue with JRRT on this. Galadriel, as a character, would work as a bishop, but how the heck does one distinguish between Galadriel and Arwen, without using hair color? I’ll maybe have to think about that one some more.

Horseflesh, that is way cool. Is this the one you’re referring to? The artwork is much better than for the Danbury LotR one (Michael Whelan kicks butt), but it still looks like all the pawns are the same.

On preview, by the way, I note that vB now handles long URLs just fine.

12

Ummm, nope. But that set has colored pieces and a kickass chess board. Man, I’d buy that set just for the board. Mine is called The Fantasy of the Crystal, and it looks like this. I had forgotten that for some reason the rooks are identical. I found these two LOTR chess sets from JaMar Galleries while searching for my link. The first one looks really well done and I might note that Gollum is a knight in that set.

If you’ll note on the link for my set they list the names of all the pieces and the pawns are all from different races. Taking that into account here’s some suggestions for pawns in your set:

White
Frodo
Bilbo
Sam
Merry
Pippin
Tom Bombadil
Lord of the Eagles
Treebeard

Black
Uruk-hai
Watcher in the Lake
Cave Troll
Wormtongue
Palantir
Nazgul
Gollum
…Bah. Can’t think of another one unless you want to include a Barrow Wight or the Willow Tree (kinda lame). I suppose you could cheat a little and make a Giant Spider of Mirkwood. They weren’t in LOTR but supposedly they were still around.

13

Urrgh. Hit Submit too soon. If you didn’t have the white pawns represented solely by hobbitses and instead have them represented by minor characters, you could bring Frodo and Sam (or Bilbo) up into the major pieces and demote Arwen and Boromir down to pawn status where they belong. Ditto with the black side. Put Gollum in as a knight and the Witch-King as a pawn. Gollum played a much bigger role in the story. Is there a way to incorporate the One Ring into the set? Maybe have a large depiction painted on the board itself?

14

MUST have the Gaffer as one of the pawns!!:slight_smile:

The Sackville-Bagginses as well. They could each be holding a piece of furniture or some wine goblets.

Merry and Pippin could both be wearing their armor.

The Witch-King and Khamul: armor, flying pterodactyls or whatever it was they were on, no facial features, crown for the Witch-King.

How about Isildur and Elendil for the knights? They aren’t active characters in the story but are crucial in the history.

15

I’m adamant on Frodo and Sam being pawns… Like I said, I’m not going to argue with Tolkien. I think it’s important to their characters: You can’t count on Sauron underestimating knights or bishops, but he can underestimate pawns and hobbits.

As for using different races for pawns, that works for the set Horseflesh has, but they’re still all “little people”. Middle Earth doesn’t have that much variety.

Tom Bombadil is definitely not a chess piece (all the business of him being “outside the question of Power”). But I do like the idea of Lobelia, at least, holding the umbrella she used to whack the half-orcs on the head.

As for the Ring itself, I’m planning on doing that as a gold inlay in the center of the board (real gold, but not very deep). Then, I’ll probably carve Spell of the Ring (either the whole poem, or just the “One Ring” part) around the edge of the board. The board itself will probably be the last thing I do, though (not nearly as much fun).

16

IMHO Eowyn and Theoden or Eomer should be the White Knights.

C’mon! They’re the horse people! They should have the horse pieces!

Also, Eowyn kills the Witch-King, so it makes sense that she should have the White Knight counterpart to the Black Knight/ Witch-King. (Also she’s 20 times more relevent to the story than Arwen… but I digress.)
Didn’t both Legolas and Gimli ride on one horse at some point? Could they be the other “White Knight” together?

17

My opinion on the knights is that you should release yourself from the idea that they have to be on horses, and try to consider the strength of the chess piece as it compares to the influence of the character form the story. With this in mind, I think Legolas and Gimli are perfect for the knights. Flexible and effective for short range movement, but little long range threat.

On the same note, and forgive the shouting, GANDALF SHOULD BE THE WHITE QUEEN!!!
I realize that this seems a little odd if you hold tight to the idea that the king and queen represent a real couple, from from the standpoint of actual chess it makes sense. The queen is the most effective piece in the game, able to move across the board in any direction, swooping in where needed. In LotR, who is it that comes flying in to save the day, nearly every time?

And I definitely want to see pictures when this is finished.

18

Just wanted to observe that you could easily distinguish Boromir with his horn.

I’ll be interested in seeing how you do the Balrog’s wings!
(ducks and covers)

19

Oops! And a Rohirrim with a spear.

20

First Arwen as queen should be larger than Galadriel as bishop. Second, have Galadriel pose with the mirror or maybe the phial, or a malorn branch or…

The other way would be to make Arwen look like Liv Tyler and Galadriel like Cate Blanchett.