I got the new Castle Chess set in the mail today, and I took some pics of it.
First, the good news: nothing is glued !
(except the board, that is...)1.The case.
Nothing really new from what we've seen already.
The artwork is nice, though; especially around the chess board.
2.The chess board.
Though the boards from the previous two chess sets were made upon a white 32 x 32 baseplate, this one is green.
It doesn't really matter really, because it's glued anyway.
3.The figures.
This set comes with a good selection of minifigs, and therefore really is a good army builder ! You get 8 crown soldiers with triangular shield and classic sword and 8 black skeleten soldiers with round shield and flail.
Plus 8 other figs to add to your army.
-The kings.
The crown king is exactly the same as the one from set 7094, and so is the undead king, which in fact is a wizard, but well...
The crown king is equipped with a chrome gold greatsword, the wizard is holding his lightling staff.
-The queens.
The crown queen is just the crown princess as we know her from set 7093; It's allways good to have another of those.
The undead queen looks kinda creepy with her long dark red hair. Underneath the armor, she wears one of those Imperial Guard torso's, just like the wizard. Plus, she's holding a pretty coll staff.
The combination armor-cape-hair doesn't really fit and causes some tension, just like it did on the queen from the Viking chess set.
-The bishops.
The crown bishop is a great looking fig in my opinion, but his undead counterpart looks somewhat plain. They both wear a cape and a hood.
The crown bishop is holding a staff with a flame on top, the undead bishop is carrying a scythe.
-The knights.
These are similar to the knight pieces we've seen in the other two chess sets; just a slope with a horse battle helmet attached; pearl gold for the crown side and dark red for the undead side.
-The rooks.
These are very similar to the rooks from the Viking chess set, except that these are NOT glued, so you can use every single piece !
Each rook holds an ovoid shield on the front, and torches (crown side) or barbs (undead side) on the sides.
-The pawns.
Now this must be the army building part of this set, with 8 pawns on each side.
First, the crown pawn; the generic soldier that appears in almost every current Castle set, holding a triangular crown shield and classic sword.
The undead pawn is a black skeleton, which is great, because the black skellies are really outnumbered in the other Castle sets.
He's holding a round shield and a flail.
4.Overall.
This must be the best chess set Lego ever produced; there are no glued elements and the figures are great !
If you're interested in the new Castle figs, but don't want to buy the whole range of sets, the Chess Set is a really good choice; You get a king, a wizard, a princess, both new crown torso's and metallic neck protector helmets, black skeletons and white skeleton heads, plus a good selection of shields, weapons and accesories.
There are a few more pics in my BS gallery:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=261507
I hope this review is usefull to all of you.
Martin
