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Eaglemoss – Lord of the Rings Chess Set

Bu yazı tarafından 12 Tem 2012 tarihinde English, Life bölümünde yayınlandı. 0 yorum aldı ve 5.578 defa okundu.

For many people Lord of the Rings is just a book or movie, but it is a philosophy for me. Not only the war of good against evil is told but also industrialization against hand labor, metal against nature, the struggle of hope against terror. In this sense, you can feel the difficulty in your life in a different way which Sam, Gimli, or an ordinary Gondor soldier has experienced. So LOTR is a concept in my life and I’m not complaining it. And sometimes I find a new way to bring it to my life once again. Chess was the last of them.

[nrelate-related]

First of all, I admit that I am an awful chess player. But always I have respect and curiosity towards this noble game. One day while surfing on the net I discovered that a British company named Eaglemoss has produced a chess set which depends on the characters of the Peter Jackson’ s screen adaptation of the LOTR. My interest in chess immediately get activated. In fact, I would have shot two birds with one stone: A top quality chess sets, and 32 elegantly sculpted figure of the Lord of the Rings. Of course, soon I realized this goal is wrong. It is not easy stop at 32 …

Once I’ ve decided to build my own chess set, I began to search Eaglemoss homepage. The company prepared three chess set, though as of this writing, the last few figures in set 3 were in production. The movies’ famous characters are placed in the three chess sets in appropriate positions, but remember it is not possible to satisfy both LOTR fans and chess fans. Namely, arguably one of the most important characters of the book Frodo turns out to be a pawn in the chess. Obviously guys in Eaglemoss have made this choice because of the physical appearance of Frodo and I think it was the right choice. But, some of the characters appear in more than one set and I think this is not a good choice. Moreover the repeated figures are usually in different roles in each set. For example, while Boromir is a miserable pawn in Set 2; he is promoted to knight in Set 3. Similarly Éowyn is a pawn in Set 1; but a Queen in Set 3. Aragorn and Gandalf, are preferred as King and Bishop in both Set 1 and Set 3, respectively.

 

I think that Eaglemoss done very well on these sets but I’ m afraid they preferred a Turkish style of planning: No planning at all!  I guess it was originally a single set but then again they preferred a Turkish style of marketing: While selling, keep producing. Things get complicated when they produced other sets. I think they should either use each character once or design a particular scene in the book in each set. For example, Set 1 should be the journey of the ring from Shire to Khazad-dum. In this case Aragorn should appear as a ranger, and Gandalf in gray. Apart from the fellowship, characters like Arwen, Elrond and Galadriel should appear in this Set. Set 2 should be prepared as Battle of Helm ‘s Deep. Then we would see Gandalf in white and characters like Ents, Haldir and soldiers of Rohan should be in this Set. Likewise the black army should be the army of Isengard with Saruman, Uruk-Hai’s and others. In this case, we would see Grima not as a pawn but as a Bishop. Naturally Battle of the Pelennor should be the last set. Now Aragorn should appear as King of Gondor, and we would see the new costumes of the fellowship of the ring. I think this would be a lot more interesting for the collectors.

 

But still, my real criticism of the Eaglemoss’ designs are not the ones above. I haven’ t come to that point yet. I wish, just wish, they were royal to characters’ true size ratios. OK, it is normal that Sauron, Shelob, or Balrog should not be in ratio with others but especially the pawns of Set 2 are funny. Gimli is quite safe on the chessboard compared to movie, because his is the same size with a Troll!

Well, still this is really a very successful chess set. Main reason for this is the emblem of New Line Cinema on the figure’s boxes. There are other companies who offer Lord of the Rings-themed chess sets, but they reflect them in cartoonish characters. However, Eaglemoss received the endorsement for the figures from the New Line Cinema after preparing them. By this way the figures are very similar to the actors portrayed the characters. Overall quality is good too, especially after the 5th character, Legolas. Obviously, they learned from the first four figures and increased the quality of production.

So, from these three sets which I criticized, which one I’m ended with? Actually neither of them and all of them partially. So from each set, I made choices and created my own anonymous set. For not to get lost in the choices I made just one selection for every chess role. As a result, it turns out to be I made selections heavily from Set 1. and some other pieces from other Sets.

 

The only difficulty is not the characters to be selected, but also how they would be placed on the chessboard. I planned which White and Black back row pieces will face each other and then which pawns will placed or front of them. This is the end result. I will explain them in more detail in future articles.

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