Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I agree, maybe someone with the skill and money can buy an initial run of
popular variant pieces and run a reverse auction to recoup the cost. the
details of course needs to be refined.

The best way to go about this is to have a pass around the list thing to
see who would want to go for it, and how many pieces.  Then once enough
people sign up, take orders.  Then they do the run, get the molds made and
able to facilitate this.  Of course, we are going to need people to commit
to this.  Don't assume there is some sort of rich uncle of the variant
community who is going to do this out of the goodness of their heart. 
Assume that the community needs to get behind it. 

On this note, I would like to see people speak up here.  Are people
willing to get behind this project?  Please speak up here.  I know I want
to get ahold them.  I would rather use distinct pieces than go with using
PlunderChess, etc...

Let's see the benefits of this.  You could do variant tournaments at
conventions and actually have the real pieces for people to use.  

Well, that is my take here.  Who else would be interested.  I can assure
you this, if there is enough interest, I do know that the pieces can
become reality.

How about this: We'll run a poll/Q&A on what people would actually do, if
given the opportunity. We'd keep it real simple. 

HYPOTHETICAL POLL QUESTIONS:

Q#1: How many people would actually buy variant pieces, for about $2 - $3
per piece? 

Q#2: How many pieces would you buy? 

Q#3: How much would you really spend in that order? 

Q#4: What pieces would you like to see made?

This seems like a good start. I would seriously spend around $100, more or
less depending on selection.

As for myself:
Q#1: How many people would actually buy variant pieces, for about $2 - $3
per piece? 
Q#2: How many pieces would you buy? 

I would look to get 1 or 2 each of the Capablanca pieces, likely a Cannon,
and maybe one of whatever else is available.

Q#3: How much would you really spend in that order? 
I would probably go as high as $50 or so, excluding shipping.

Q#4: What pieces would you like to see made?
Myself, I would like to see this:
1. The Knight+Rook
2. The Knight+Bishop
3. The Knight+Queen
4. Cannon or Catapult
5. A second type of pawn
6. A Super Knight
7. Chariot (this perhaps could double as the Knight+Rook)

I personally would like to see 3D Chinese Chess pieces myself that can
double as the variant pieces.  What is described above could fit that. 
That is me perhaps though.

Maybe other people have other ideas here, like an Elephant (Afil).

At $2 to $3 I would buy about 16 pieces, that would be about a limit of
$50. I would probably be looking for half knight valued pieces, such as
ferz, wazir, alil, Dabbabah, Crab, Barc. Also a lion would not be bad, for
whatever kind of lion it would be.

Jianying Ji, your last message seemed to be regarding the purchasing of
fairy chess pieces. If you'd like, I could point you to some resources on
this site concerning various ways of making your own pieces quite
inexpensively, in both 2D and 3D. Additionally, I carve my own pieces out
of oak with files, chisels, and a Dremel tool, and have sold sets to a few
people, and I have also made a variety if fairy pieces for my own use.
Since I do not have a lathe, but should in a month or two, making custom
pieces should take much less time, and they would then be close to the
price range you mentioned. Just some thoughts... ***Hopefully what I've
just written is not ethically contrary to the policies of this site. If
this is the case, I'll delete it immediately, or, the editors simply
could. I do not own a business. Really it's more of a hobby, but a few
people offered to pay for some of the sets I've made.

Matthew, are you capable now of making custom pieces for people?  Please
feel free to offer your services now to people to do this.  Longer term,
perhaps a commercial version would be viable.  In the mean time, I
personally don't have any issues with you doing this.  If things, IAGO
related work out where we get a supplier, then maybe.  But, so long as you
can serve the needs of the community, please feel free to consider helping
out.

Anyone else have objections to what Matthew spoke on?  I personally don't
at this point.  Even if there is mass production of variant pieces, then
the community will be wanting more obscure ones.  So, at this point, I
don't see any issue now.  This may change down the road though.

By the way, what country are you located?

Hey, Matthew. My question was meant to elicit $$$ responses, because I want
to see if we could get a major chesspiece maker to make variant pieces. To
do that, we'd have to demonstrate a market that would make it worthwhile
for the company to invest $5000 or so in setting up production. 

On the other hand, we seem to have accumulated about $200 so far, which
isn't going to start a competition between producers for our business
just yet, so don't give up hope. ;-) Seriously, put up some pictures.
There have been some artists and craftsmen that have mentioned work
they've done or could do on this site before. And I'll probably contact
you if that $200 doesn't get an awful lot bigger rather soon.

What I'm looking for is simple: a whole bunch of variant pieces that I
can use in large numbers, and get my friends to use. This means cheap,
decent, standard and standardized, and plentiful. I will take the best I
can get, however.

I'd be willing to spend $100 or so.

Jianying Ji wrote: 'Also a lion would not be bad, for whatever kind of lion it would be.' Lions and Unicorns and Elephants are always useful. They could be marketed as decorations, with a handful purchased by chess variant players.

I am going to pour some cold water on these proposals. We do not have twenty people here able/willing to spend $100. We do not have twenty people here able/willing to spend a full year playing in a tournament. We have not had twenty votes for Recognized Chess Variant of the Month in a long time, 10 to 15 votes was normal, as I recall. At one time I was going to propose a rule that we ignore the result of any RCV poll with less than 12 voters.

Hey, David Howe, that takes us to $300. And David Paulowich, did you say
put you down for $50? Before I posted the original question, I talked it
over a bit with someone, and said I want to see if I get 7 people to
respond. Hang on a sec while I go count... well, there's 6, if you count
me, and that kinda seems like cheating. So I haven't gotten near a
double-digits response - yet. 

What are the goals for something like this little poll? Well, we know
there are a few people who will buy a bunch of new pieces if they're
decent. And they may well be the core of a variant piece business startup,
but by themselves, they [ha, we, since I'm certainly someone who'd put up
$100] we cannot get Staunton to make us pieces. I'd like to know just how
many of us there are - but that's not going to happen, we don't write.
Pity. There is power in numbers.

What I was curious about is the number of people who will spend $10-$15 on
pieces, and not much more. If there's 1,000 - 2,000 of them, we may
succeed. But we have to make the customers and the manufacturer visible to
each other. How to do that? They don't write. Pity. It will take a lot of
advertising...

And finally, even if we don't get 7 respondents to this topic, we did get
an offer to make pieces that's worth looking into. And if Matt quits his
day job and goes into piece production, we may have gotten something good
enough to bring to our friends, to give to our friends, and to get our
friends to buy a couple pieces. I could probably live with that. Joe

If I had extra money I would gladly buy variant pieces simply to support the cause. But the wife doesn't work and there are 4 kids... lots of bills, high gas prices, etc. Still, if I saw an IAGO Game Pack in the store, I'd likely not be able to resist taking out the credit card and buying it... if reasonably priced. But then, it would likely sit next to my Shogi, Xianqi, Navia, and many other games, waiting for the day when an opponent would show up.

Can I again run this by everyone?  I know people say they can cut and stick
and so on.  But if you happen to play someone a game, and they like it, how
will they be able to get the equipment to play it by themselves?

Been following the game piece discussion...and as a potential consumer,
here's my take.

I'm the father in a family of four.  Kids are in ten and eleven.  We all
enjoy playing chess, chess variants and a variety of other board games. 
We have maybe 20 fairly standard board games.

We enjoy chess variants quite a bit, and in fact enjoy inventing variants
of any board games when we feel the playing field may not be fair under
traditional rules.

If/when we need new pieces, we usually just find something around the
house, maybe from another game board, maybe from a pencil case or even the
fridge, to represent a new piece.  

Recently played Wuss II with my daughter and we used erasers as the Wuss.

Played a variation of falcon chess (8x8 board) and used lego firemen as
the falcons.

Played 8 stone chess using the Korean version of jacks (Gong - gi) as the
stones.

Much as I like the variants and the variety of pieces, think that I'd
likely just improvise instead of buying pieces.

One thing I might buy, if available, is a 10 x 8 board.  Have been able to
make do with checker + chess board, but it's a bit inconvenient.

Anyway, as a casual yet enthusiastic chess variant player, and one who
truly enjoys the alternative and obscure pieces...I'm afraid I wouldn't
be a consumer.  Hope I'm in the minority, as I'd really like to see
chess variants spread and even become a profitable venture for those
involved.

1. It would be great to be able to buy them

2. The CV market appears to be too small to justify a large production run

3. A production run would undoubtedly exclude many players' desired pieces and desired boards

Rich, you ask, 'But if you happen to play someone a game, and they like it, how will they be able to get the equipment to play it by themselves?'

That is a fair question. And it would be great if they could buy the pieces, board, or even the actual entire game. The first variant set I made was for my Pillars of Medusa. A few guys played it at work. It drew a crowd. However, even if they could buy it, would they? And if they could buy pieces, they'd likely get the rook/knight bishop/knight, queen/knight combo pieces... but they'd still have trouble because they'd need an 11 x 11 board a Medusa piece and a Morph piece. So even if they could buy variant pieces, I think they could always end up with a variant that they like that they simply wouldn't be able to buy all the pieces for.

I played Maxima using pieces made of bottle tops with the CV graphics glued inside... it matched the CV pre-set and was thus great visually.

I played Shogi with probably 8 different people face to face over the years. All liked it, but we always used one of my 2 sets. Only one of the 8 players bought Shogi. It was the same with Xianqi. I played against a man from Viet Nam on his set. I liked the game a lot and made 2 sets of my own (one traditional Chinese style and one 3D Staunton style for teaching Fide players the game). Later I ended up buying a large wooden Xianqi set, an imitation jade set, and a magnetic one that resides on the refrigerator. One of the people I played, a former member of Mensa, bought a set.

There is, however, a very small market for Shogi and Xianqi in the U.S. If it were not for their popularity in Asia I doubt that companies would be keen on producing those sets. As a sad note... I believe the market for other CVs is even smaller.

Doug - Thanks for the comment and link - that 3D printing method would
indeed be great.  I suppose if I live long enough I'll actually be able
to print (or have someone else print) interesting game pieces.  The dragon
on the video link was impressive.

Can I explain another reason why having commercially available variant
pieces would help here?  Most game purchases are done as gifts, either for
birthday or Christmas.  In order to facilitate the growth of variants, it
is going to be important to allow people to buy the equipment to give
other people as a gift.  This also would allow the variant community to
give someone variant pieces as a gift.  Like, let's say you do have a
variant, and you know people happened to like a design of yours.  If you
have pieces and equipment available for sale, you could buy it for them as
a gift.

Without this, what happens with variants is people find it a one-time
novel experience.  A one-time novel experience doesn't grow interest in
variants.

On this note, would people here be willing to buy chess variant pieces for other people, to give as gifts?  Shoot, you could even do some custom jobs where you get to name the piece after a person, give it some wacky power that is customized, and particular, as a gag gift.

Like the 'Steve' piece.  It has the power to move like a Knight (because it has noble intentions) but has the power to freeze other pieces next to it, through the power of 'smalltalk' preventing them from moving.  So, these would be gag gift pieces you can give people.  I am sure there is a Steve out there somewhere (I don't have anyone in mind by refering it).

So, when people play a customized variant chess, they can use their own custom piece instead of the queen, or replacing the king if doing extinction.

Thanks, Doug, for the link. [Gary's already trying to figure out how to
get one, I bet. ;-) ] 

Interesting discussion - we got about 10 people so far, so I got past my
'7' respondents mark. And people actually waved about a third of a thou
around - including my hundred, of course. We don't get House of Staunton
like that, but we do have Matt and Gary saying they can make pieces, and
Matt might make pieces for others. 

Haven't gotten everything wanted - yet. But it seems we've gotten a few
steps along a road leading toward what many would like, decent, cheap,
available variant pieces. And I at least am still waving my money around.
I want guards and priestesses and leaders and ministers and chancellors
and elephants - *gotta* have elephants - and rearing knights and... 

So what do we have from this? First, I hope people will keep this
discussion going a bit more. With all due respect, I'm kinda tired of
non-pieces being drafted into chess armies. So I use 10-15 different sets,
and twist ties and elastics and such - not a huge step up, sorta on the
edge of bearability. I want more! Okay, I'm just greedy, and willing to
save my pennies for something worthwhile. 

Hey Matt, do you allow input from the customer? Can I specify sizes, for
example? How about shapes? A slightly tapered rectangular wheeled tower
would make a spectacular warmachine, for example. Enjoy. Joe

I have been discussing with my brother about making equipment for chess
variants.

The first question is 'Are there enough potential customers to justify
start-up?'

Second, 'What quality of merchandise is expected?'

Third, 'What are the customers willing to spend to obtain this
merchandise?'

The most inexpensive form would be cloth boards and wooden discs.

The cloth can be printed with any variety of patterns with little
additional cost (althought there may be a minimum number required for a
run, and the size would affect the cost).

Wooden discs can simply be stamped with a letter representing the piece
type (on the opposite side could be noted its promotion value, such as B
for Bishop and B+ for promoted Bishop). These discs can be stained to
color and coated with poyurethane for durability.

Both of these ideas would be easy to manufacture and very inexpensive.
With the customer realizing a 'small' set for possibly $20. Since they
would be light-weight, shipping would not be much. A cloth draw-string bag
to hold the set could be included at additional cost.

This way, the customer can custom-order their set. Specify the board and
the type and number of discs. Each piece can be priced individually.
Common sets may be offered at a reduced price because of mass production.

My suggestion is natural wood for White, a dark stain for Black, black
lettering on White pieces and yellow lettering on Black. Red lettering for
promotion value. The font for the lettering should not be too ornate, but
it should also not be too plain. The playing fields could be either
checkered or non-checkered according to preference, but the colors might
be limited to primary, secondary, black and white.

So, if anyone is interested feel free to drop me an e-mail. If I get
enough interest, I'll start on some samples right away and post a few
images.

But perhaps you could offer both options, with the graphic pieces higher priced?

Hello, Larry
Can one send the pictures wanted on the disks? I have a need for some
fairly high-quality game pieces, and wooden disks could be very nice. I
need colors.  
Color me interested
Joe

With graphics, they might need to be created in-house. If supplied by the
customer, I would need serious assurance that they were not under someone
else's copyright. Lawyers can be worse than fleas.

Graphics on the discs could be done. Print them out (using appropriately
colored paper to avoid those nasty showing edges), trim them out and then
glue them on the disc. A coat of clear polyurethane and they should looked
quite nice.

But this is highly labor-intensive. Someone has to cut out all those
little graphics. And it has to be neat, so they can't be rushed. And wage
slaves are not cheap. The cost would depend on many factors. Have you seen
the price of printer cartridges lately?

It may push the price of a completed disc over a dollar. I'm aiming at
less than fifty cents for a disc.

In additional to letters, I had thought to make up some simple symbols,
self-designed, common or public domain. I know how to make rubber stamps,
but I would need to sell a good quantity of that particular symbol'd
piece to make the process cost-effective.

Larry is right, of course. My first Xianqi set was made using the method he describes. Making one set for myself wasn't bad... but making a lot of sets, or a set with a lot of pieces by that method would be tough.

An alternative would be to have a printer print adhesive sheets with circular pull outs. Send the ordered sheets and 'blank' disks to the people who order them. This reduces the in-house labor to shipping sheets and disks. No printing (it is at the print shop), no gluing, no cutting... etc.

These days there are many games that use the adhesive sticker method in which the customer adds the sticker.