Review of Royal Guard pieces from The Chess Empire

These pieces are the boxwood and ebonised boxwood version, for $US125 less 10% standard discount.

Delivery was prompt - only 4 or 5 days - and the pieces arrived undamaged. The finish is good - you can find the odd minor blemish in the wood or the odd minor tool mark, but only if you look closely. Also, the coverage of the varnish, in the case of the white knights, and the black stain, in the case of the black knights, is a little patchy on the upper chest where there's a very narrow gap between chin and chest because of the knight design, but again, you have to look fairly closely.

Dimensions in mm for height / width:

Pawn 46/28
Rook 57/32
Knight 68/32
Bishop 72/32
Queen 82/35
King 95/35

The heights were measured with a tape measure, rather than calipers, so might be out be a mm or so.

Weights in g:

Pawns: all 19 or 20
Rooks: 34,38,38,38
Knights: 44,44 (black) and 50,52 (white)
Bishops: 35,36,37,37
Queens: 47,47,48,49
Kings: 47,48

So one of the rooks is a little lighter than the others, and the white knights are heavier than the blacks by a bit, and are, in fact, the heaviest pieces in the set by a small margin. These discrepancies can just about be felt by hand when directly comparing rook against rook, or white knight against black, but are a non-issue in normal play or analysis.

The white pieces totalled 560 g, while the black pieces came to 540 g, giving a total of 1100 g, as specified on the website.

Consistency of carving across the knights is good. The set is pretty much as depicted in the pics on the TCE website, with the only notable discrepancy being that the queen's coronet is a bit thicker than that of the queen on the website pics. (It's the typical Lardy-style bevelled edge with some grooves cut into it.)

The above observations about appearance and weight include some nit-picking really: the pieces look good and handle nicely in play, and I can recommend them if you want a 95 mm king that'll sit on a ~45 mm square. (I'd happily buy them again if I needed a replacement set for some reason.)

As far as other options go, I was looking also at TCE's French Lardy pieces. They're about 20% cheaper, and they look mostly very similar, except for the knights. (I do like these Royal Guard knights though.) And House of Staunton offers what look to be identical pieces to Royal Guard, including the same knights. These are called the Noble and sell for $US99 (for the ebonised version), but they're out of stock right now.

Note that these pieces are a replacement for a completely different set I purchased from another vendor (i.e. NOT TCE, or HoS for that matter) at a slightly cheaper price, but returned because:

- there was a chip out of one of the pieces
- consistency of carving across the knights was poor, to say the least
- the pieces were not the same as the ones shown on the vendor's site: in particular, the supplied queen, bishop and knight were all the same height, unlike those in the pics.

Cute knight! I did not realize TCE made a set that inexpensive. That is a very nice set and your review is detailed enough to be helpful to anyone interested in the set.

Thanks, @zabz99, thanks for the review.  That is a nice looking set, especially for the price!