The chess pieces (both standard and variant) are fairly small and not weighted, but they have felt bottoms and they're well designed and handsome. The rules for the alternate pieces are incomplete, poorly written, and rather dumb, but that hardly matters, because you were going to make up some rules of your own, right? The one nice idea in the rule book is to provide a rating for the relative power of each piece and then invite players to start the game by choosing their own set of pieces based on a desired numeric limit, such as 70. This is a nice variant idea! If the proposed movements of the new pieces made more sense, I'd give this set a 5-star rating across the board (so to speak).

There's a lot to love about Faerie Chess. It's an ambitious idea, executed well: 14 new chess pieces with interesting new moves, that integrate well with the 6 familiar Staunton-style pieces from traditional western chess. The new pieces and board are attractively designed and well-made for their price point. The reference cards explaining the new moves are a nice inclusion.The instructions are minimal, but if you've played chess before, then the learning curve won't be so bad. There are absolutely no suggestions as to strategy or tactics with the new pieces, but I think that part of the point here is to encourage fresh thinking about chess, rather than offer another version of by-the-book chessplaying.For all their attractiveness, several of the new pieces can be hard to distinguish from one another at first: the Inquisitor, Courtesan, Pontiff, and Lancer might all have been Bishops in another chess set (and the Courtesan and Pontiff may take a bit to tell apart); the Regent is far too easily mistaken for a Queen; the Herald might seem to be a Rook at a glance; and the Thief is nearly identical in silhouette to a Pawn, except in size, if it's turned a certain way. It's a little bit more work than it should be to tell the pieces apart -- which was, historically, one of the things that the Staunton design did so much better than its predecessors. This was my main disappointment with the game.Gameplay itself is a LOT of fun, full of surprises (especially since White and Black do not have to start with the same pieces), and there are myriad combinations of starting armies to explore. The replayability of this game is very attractive; if you're into it at all, you'll immediately want to try another setup after finishing a game.One additional possibility not mentioned in the rules is that players can agree to assign their own invented moves to the new pieces, if they want to explore even more fairy-chess ideas. (In the case of the included Catapult piece, which has one of the most limiting movement rules imaginable, it's an option well worth considering!)You might also use the cards as a draw pile when setting up, to randomly select pieces to fill your lineup.And if an 8x8 chessboard doesn't offer enough room to explore this set's potential, it's easy enough to create 10x8 or other sizes from good cardboard or plywood; the pieces are small enough that a somewhat larger board isn't too unwieldy.This is a $25 universe of chess possibilities, and possibly the best chess variant prototyping kit ever marketed.The included pieces are enough to use for many historical chess variants played on 8x8 or different boards; it's well worth exploring those, if this game piqued your interest and you want to dive deeper.My main wish for an improved version of this game (besides more visually distinct designs for some of the pieces) is that more of the new pieces came in pairs. Traditional chess has a symmetry that is unavailable with this set (i.e., Bishops, Knights, Rooks).I do not think that this makes the game bad or unplayable at all, and I actually enjoy the dynamic play that emerges from this set's built-in asymmetry and greater variety of pieces. But some pieces have the potential to become regular favorites. Perhaps over time certain fairy pieces will get elevated to more permanent status by popular acclaim, and future versions of this set will include them in pairs. For me personally, it was worth ordering a second set.

Its all it says it was but it came damaged. The corner was all smashed, but the contents were undamaged.