They could have posted about this every day. Doesn't mean people are going to suddenly decide to support it. It was going to be a tough sell as it was. First, it's not an ideal chess set since the pieces aren't conducive to casual play. The asking price is on the high side for something you'll need the space and desire to display. If I'm going to buy Transformers, I want them to transform. I have no desire to display a chess set with an assortment of Transformers that I'll never play with.

This is coming from someone who bought the Lego UCS Falcon and built a coffee table to display it.

 

Any hard feelings I have over this are because I actually wanted a nice Transformers chess set, and this one they tried to make was asinine. Too big, too expensive, and not even particularly attractive in the first place. They could have made one that was economical at half the price at least and we could be celebrating a cool new Transformers chess set right now. Disappointing. Hopefully someone still tries to make one and does it better.

 

Because it is Eaglemoss.
Eaglemoss Reviews - 1.1 Stars

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Hmm… I see. Most of the hostility I’ve seen doesn’t go towards the company but instead towards the idea of the chess set failing. Still think it’s overly hostile, but I guess screw eaglemoss then.

 

I'm not saying that everyone is right, but it started out with a lousy company and a dumb idea (no rhyme or reason to the pieces, too large and expensive) and just snowballed from there.

 

Yea, such I fanbase for things they don't like. I will admit I do like tossing an occasional jab at the Beast Wars fans for my own entertainment, but yea, in general I don't take pleasure in watching something fail that doesn't affect me. And in this case, really doesn't affect us getting other Transformers items (or at least probably a minimal licensing fee that Hasbro is missing out on) by this failing/succeeding.

 

Eh, I think the idea being dumb is subjective. It got over $100 000 Canadian, so clearly people were into it, you know? That’s I was initially upsetish because it felt like a bunch of people being like “I don’t like this so even though it doesn’t affect me I’m happy, because I have the right opinion”. That, imo, is a really crappy attitude to have towards things, and one I’m not very fond of.

But yeah I’d no idea about the company.

 

It's dumb because you have to have a cheat sheet or look under each figure to know how it is allowed to move. Keep in mind that you are not supposed to pick up a piece if you are not going to move it, according to official rules.

 

Make the set fit in an Ikea Detolf then it MIGHT have a chance if the price & the choice of characters for the pieces are right. It's a no-brainer to use the repaints for EVERYTHING except the King & Queen pieces.

As to ID'ing the pieces, it's not a big deal to solve by having the base of the pieces labeled front & back. Like many of us have said, non King & Queen pieces should use repaints characters such as Ironhide/Ratchet, Datsun bros, Fire trucks Bros, BBB variant minibots, Seekers, Coneheads, Insecticons, Sweeps & Gnaws.... or even Shattered Glass & Nemesis alter egos... tons of picks. I mean, does anyone at Eagle Moss even know/understand the concept of TF repaints and variants!? That'll even save on sculpting & production costs.... ugh.

 

This is a forum dedicated to Transformers, associated media, and (primarily) toy collecting, not chess aficionados. Victory Saber is cool. A chess set, while also cool, is not worth >3x the cost of Victory Saber. Sure, the set looked good, but $600 is steep. For less than $600, you can buy an exceptionally well-crafted chess set.

 

READ THESE BOARDS HASBRO!
I would pay MAYBE 15 bucks for the Soundwave figure...

 

Why does it have such a lofty price?  This seems like something that would’ve done great at retail had it been in the $60 range. 

 

I think a lot of the price is due to the ridiculous size. It's a 25"x25" goddamn board. That's kind of insane and big. The pieces themselves are 6" tall. That's this big!



I just don't think there was enough to offer here aside from size factor. It's nearly unplayable as a chess set. You can't tell from a glance what piece is supposed to be what, so that defeats the purpose of it being a chess set.

It doesn't even look THAT good too. I hate to say this but...it does look rather toy-ish too. I specifically looked at 700 dollar chess sets to see what you can get and I found stuff like these:

Mary Stuart Queen of Scots Theme Metal Chess Set with Elm Burl Chess Board

Chetak Staunton Chess Set in Ebony & Boxwood with Walnut& Maple Moulded Edge Chess Board - 4.25" King

Large Italian Arabesque Staunton Metal & Wood Chess Set with Elm Burl Chess Board

The second board is big too! A 23.5" by 23.5" with a 4.25" King!

For the price of what Eaglemoss wants, you can get some truly baller chess sets to impress your friends and family and give yourself an air of intellectual prowess and refinement. But the Transformers set does none of that.

 

Quelle surprise

 

I've wanted a TF chess set ever since I got back into Transformers in the early 2000s. When I saw this, I was super excited. And then I actually looked at it and the board was cheap and gawdy looking and, as far as I could tell, there was no easy way to tell at a glance which figure was supposed to be which chess piece. Oh and I saw the price too so there was that.

I still want a TF chess set and I've even started making my own a couple times (back in the early 2000s I sculpted a pretty decent Optimus from polymer clay and I had a handful of other characters' heads and a few other random parts but I ran out of steam (the plan was to take molds from the figures and cast them in pewter). More recently I've considered 3d modeling the figures but I know I'd run out of steam again well before getting even close to finished. Then WizKids started releasing TF minis and I hoped to assemble a set from them but it seems they've fizzled out (got a wave of four and then two figures from the second wave with the remaining two still not out yet). I don't really have a point in telling this, I guess, but it just brought it up for me again and made me sad. And since I'm babbling about this, pay of the plan was to put the figures on bases that would have a cybertronian kind of style but that would make it easy to identify which chess piece each figure was. Rooks would be Omega and combiners, Kings are obvious, pawns would be minibots and tapes plus reflector, Queens would be Elita and Starscream in his coronation gear (though I also thought about Grimlock in his crown since a chess queen doesn't necessarily need to be a female character) and I hadn't settled on knights and bishops: Jazz, Prowl, Mirage, Hound, Soundwave, Shockwave, Thundercracker, and Skywarp but I wasn't sure which role each would play. Anyway, enough of my musings on a project I almost certainly will never get around to doing.

 

Every piece apart from the pawns have a symbol on all four sides showing what they are, so you just have to know those.

 

This was an easy one to predict.  I saw the price and laughed.  

 

If your chess set requires you to look carefully at each piece, you're doing it wrong.

 

I collect neither static TF figurines nor chess sets (I'm the type that knows how to play chess but loses to all but the stupidest players), so this was never for me. It just seemed stupidly extravagant to me - too large and fancy/expensive, which really limited its mass appeal. I think perhaps a $100-$200 set only slightly larger that your average chess board would've had a much better chance - not with me, but with other people.

 

It still managed to raise $100,000 more or less. So I hope that they have got enough of a signal to go back to the drawing board and start again.