Medieval Chess Set With Storage Drawer

In the fall of 2023, my eldest daughter, Mariana (5 yo), learned to play chess using an app in my car. I didn't realize how quickly she was picking up the game until she randomly castled against me, to my surprise—where I had never even shown her that move! I asked her where she learned to do that, and all I received were delightful giggles in return.

A few months later, she approached me and asked one of the questions any dorky dad loves to hear: “Hey, Dad, can you get me my own chess set?"

I paused before replying and decided to test the waters: "Instead of going and buying one...how about I MAKE one, munchkin?"

She was thrilled at the idea. With her as my greatest inspiration, I began a multi-month-long saga of trial and error that led to something I'm incredibly proud of. 

I spent endless hours tinkering with my collection to design (and often redesign) each piece, testing them out in games to see how they felt. Some pieces came together quite quickly, like the rook and pawns. Others, like the knight, felt like an arduous grind to create something that had the expected resemblance of the piece while still being able to fit on a board and be usable. In most cases, the Ah-Ha! moment came by luckily stumbling across a single LEGO brick that I didn't even know existed (like #15071 used for the knight) that opened the door to new considerations.

After designing the pieces, I decided adding gold accents would help add a little character and pop to the build. I initially hoped to use the metallic gold chrome color but was limited to using the much more widely available pearl gold to ensure uniformity across all the pieces. To maintain that same continuity, I located weapons or items that either existed in pearl gold or could be assembled using several smaller pearl gold pieces (like the pawns’ spears).

Once I had finalized the pieces, I started to design the board, drawing inspiration from other LEGO creations and a desire to have a place to store and protect the pieces when they were not on display. I settled on a single-drawer approach, with two separate areas for storing each color’s pieces. The single drawer approach made transportation of the build a lot easier. After playing a few trial games with pieces sliding everywhere, I added the "one stud" mechanism in each square to help provide some stability to each piece after moving it.

This entire build was made without the use of a computer program. Instead, I relied on a lot of hands-on trial and error, which made the result much more rewarding.

"What piece are you going to try and make tonight, Dad?" became a common question from my daughter on our drives home from school. What better motivator to complete the project could I ask for? Our first game played on the completed set will forever be one of my favorite memories with my girl.

Hopefully, you find the design worthy of re-creation! If not, you at least enjoyed the story of how it came to be.

All the best,

Jonathan