First let me cover the basics. The board itself is made of wood. It is heavier than it appears which leads me to believe that is some type of denser, heavy wood, Like oak. It certainly is not made from particle board. The sixty-four squares on the board are two colors, white and brown. They are arranged exactly like a checker board. Each color has two corner spaces diagonally across from each other. The sixty-four squares are trimmed by a cream colored wood maybe an eighth of an inch thick, This thin border is “framed” by another thicker one. This edge piece is roughly half an inch thick. It’s color darker, richer, like a full bodied India Pale Ale. This trim is not the same brown that is found   checkered across the board. The brown squares and the brown pieces for that mattruer, are colored more like a Stout  like aGuiness. Richer then an India Pale Ale.  As for Blacks (actually brown) opponents, The White guys. These pieces just like the white squares are not actually white. They are more like that thin trim, a creamy biege like a cloudly hefenwiezen, like Blue Moon or Easy Street Wheat. All thirty-two pieces are positioned in their proper starting spaces silently watching their oppenents on the other side, black waiting for the first sign of attack. The four rows of unoccupied squares between the two teams already looks as though it has seen its share of epic battles. There are stains that Alice would say looks like dry blood when you get closer. There are scratches all across it as if the swords of the fallen soldiers had cut into the solid battle ground.

Let’s meet the teams. Each team has sixteen members. All the pieces have green felt on their bottom, to help aviod scratches when they are moved across the board. Each side has eight pawns. The pawn is the most numerous piece in the game, In this battle he is like the general infintry.The pawns are the smallest pieces. Every white pawn  looks exactly like the pawn on this right or the one to the left. They are remarkably smooth they have no distiguishing markings at all. The way they are cut reminds me of the legs on a dinning room table, or stair banister, not in size of course. The Black pawns on the other side share most of the same features as the white, both wieght, texture, size and shape. Yet it is possible with a watchful eye to distiguish one pawn from the next. The brown stain that gives these pieces there color has exposed the wood lines that one tends to see on a expensive corporate desk. These lines appear on all sixteen black pieces but they never duplicate themselves, like the markings on a killer whale.

Enough about the plain pawns, Let’s move forward to the power pieces. Each side has seven power pieces. The  most powerful piece is the Queen, both sides have just one. She always starts on her own colored square. Her shape is very hour glass like she wears a crown on the top of her head. On her left stand the other three power pieces (each of these has a twin on the kings side) first her bishop. Skinny like the queen shorter only then the queen and the king. On his face, where the eyes maybe, if he had eyes, is a slit that covers half of his head, as if he were wearing a medievel battle helmet that protects everything in his line of sight. Next to the bishop is the Knight. The Knight is actually just a horses head. His ears are poinnted forward as if in constant awareness. His eyes craved one on each side are wide open, alert watching for signs of the enemy. His nostrails  on the base of his nose are flaired as if breathing heavily in anticipation. His carved main flows down both sides of his wooden neck. The final piece set in all four corners is the rook. Shorter and lighter then every other piece excluding pawns. The rook is shaped like a castle spire. On its rounded top four silts are cut that would make great stands for archers if they existed at this size.  The final piece is the King. The King sits to the right of the queen on a square oppisite his color. He is the tallest piece maybe three inches high. He is shaped and carved the same way as the queen, but heavier, thicker, less feminie somehow. He wears on his head a crown three times the size of the queens, And shaped differently as well. The kings crown is shaped more like a three leaf clover then any sort of jewel.