Piece Theme Poll

Hi all, just wanted to do a quick poll on piece styles!

I'll keep the discussion open here in the comments, but as always remember to be civil, there has been a recent uptick in banter (both on-topic and off) so just something to keep in mind since we do try to moderate this forum as much as possible

STANDARD 4 LIFE

neo actually looks like chess pieces in an alternate universe where the chancellor is canon. standard IS beginner friendly but should only be used for beginners

What looks like major pieces and not just glorified pawns? for me it's the first one

if you had to 3d print them, would you print them in neo or standard

I cant even lol. But STILL standard

I will phrase this differently. If you had to make a set of let's assume Blackletter chess into the real world using wood, will it come out closer to neo or standard

standard

For Blackletter Chess, the pieces that are in standard are all there + the fairies. Will you glue a knight ang a king for the general, or follow a circular design that fits more of the chess vibe. The queen isn't a taped rook+bishop, then why do you differenciate the archbishop and chancellor?

I wonder why the chancellor and archbishop don't have that rook and bishop glued to the horse's back.

all hail neo. it's aesthetically pleasing and the only downside is that you have to remember 30 pieces, which is reasonable.

If it is not variants lke the X ot tricks/Enchanted Woodland that uses a lot of fairies, and if we are talking about variants with minimal fairies, I don't care. but I am just so used to Neo that differenciating is really hard.

wolyn has a good point here. In Musketeer Chess, the archbishop and the chancellor more resembles the neo pieces than the standards.

NEO

'argue with evidence' -my english teacher-

I am choosing Neo.Sorry but in my opinion,standard,alpha,classic and others just look goofy.

Standard is better. It’s way more practical and still looks cool. Neo is excessive. It feels too unnecessarily fancy.

Here’s a scenario: 30 new pieces are added to the server. Everyone using Neo is really going to struggle because they have to spend more time thinking about how the pieces move - meaning less time spent on the actual game, affecting the overall gameplay quality. However, Standard combines the designs of existing pieces based on a given new piece’s movement (if possible), leading to less thinking capacity spent on learning the pieces because the design implies the movement.

Regardless, Standard should really be the standard design - there are too many beginners out there that struggle figuring out which piece is which.

My personal opinion:

If I had to pick one, it'd probably be Standard; I play a lot of speed chess and there's a fair bit of confusing fairy pieces out there so it's probably practical to have something easier to read than something that's fancy (e.g., reading English in Times New Roman vs reading it in cursive).

That being said, I think some pieces from Neo are better, for example:

• Dragon Bishop and Xiangqi Horse - they have actual scales!
• Grasshopper - honestly both work but Neo has more details here without sacrificing efficiency since it's literally just a grasshopper, there's no reference to go off of other than that

I think there's nothing wrong with fancy pieces if there's just a few; @imchesspro0930 brought up a good point about OTB sets and how they would likely use something closer to Neo, and I agree. That being said, we have 23 fairy pieces, 2 walls, and 1 duck online, so there's a lot more variety and you're constantly being introduced to something new across the different variants.

I prefer standard because I get confused with neo

As BN said, if there are 30 pieces added, I would say I would take about 3 days to remember all of them, and yes I do agree neo is a bit fancy, but if you buy a set of standard/mustekeer chess online, it is fancy and that is the whole point.