Digital Christmas 2: Knight Moves

[mediamogul]

Happy Kwanzaanukahmas everyone! Here's hoping the 'nog hasn't turn sour yet and your holiday sweaters aren't too itchy. As I mentioned last year, I always like to put together a digital gift for my friends online. The previous Pi NES case ended up being a lot of fun for me personally, as I got to use the Lego Digital Designer to make it happen. A few months ago, I started thinking about what I might like to do this year and I knew I wanted to do another Lego build. However, I always end up gifting to a wide variety of people, so I decided this time to build something that just about anyone could enjoy.

I've seen a few Lego chess sets online before and thought they looked like they'd be a lot of fun to build and use. However, they all generally required several hundreds of pieces, which can make the price escalate quickly. To keep the cost down, I decided to use a smaller build to it's strengths and create a travel-sized chess set. Legos are already a natural fit for this, as the pieces can be affixed to the board easily, allowing for a game to be played under shaky conditions, such as a car ride.

I looked at a few pictures online of builds that existed, but none of them had the features I was looking for. I wanted it to look like a really nice miniaturized deluxe chess set, be as portable as possible and have separate trays for the two colored pieces that wouldn't randomly slide open, or allow the pieces to rattle around inside. After settling on a look for the board, based on a photo of another build, I was able to work everything in at 261 pieces. I haven't built it myself yet due to time constraints, but I plan on putting one together before doing some traveling this summer.

I hope that anyone who gives this build a go has as much fun with it as I have so far and that everyone has a happy holiday and new year.

Hee Haw and Merry Christmas!

The plans, parts list and building instructions can be found here and a few of the top Lego part purchasing options are listed below.

Lego Pick A Brick
Official Lego Shop
Large, but limited selection
Long processing and delivery time

Lego Bricks and Pieces
Official Lego Replacement Parts
Massive selection, limited only by current stock
Fast processing and delivery time

BrickLink
Third Party distribution for official Lego parts
Almost unlimited selection at any given time
Fast processing and delivery time
Prices can inflate when purchasing from multiple sellers

[lilbud]