Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

Chess Piece Discs

The photograph below shows a set of chess variant pieces I created using wooden discs. You can purchase these discs at most craft stores (they're sometimes called wooden nickels). The discs I used are 1.5 inches in diameter, and about 1/8" thick. The piece images were printed out in 1.25" diameter circles, and laminated. I then cut them out and pasted them to the discs.

Top two rows: Black wizards, champions, nightriders, cardinals, chancellors, king-knights (and amazons), princes (non-royal kings), wazirs, ferz's, cannons, maos (diagonal cannons), elephants, camels, lions.

Next two rows: White pieces in the same order as specified above.

5th - 8th rows: Orthodox chess pieces.

Notes

Most of the chess piece images were created using Armando Hernandez Marroquin's Chess Motif font. The Cannon pieces utilize the ideas of Fergus Duniho for rook-like cannons and bishop-like cannons being represented by simplified horizontal and angled cannon figures. The Lion pieces (upper-right) and Champion (to the left of the Nightriders) are also based on his design.


Written by David Howe.
WWW page created: November 24, 2001.