The Chess Game
75mm Resin kit from Jeff Shiu
Painted in 2025
Whilst not as directly evocative as the Mitches Military Model’s “Over the Top” diorama, this vignette is still rather poignant to my eye in that a quiet game of chess precedes what will probably be at best, some horrific memories for these two men.
The kit
It’s a lovely idea, and very well sculpted, although I do have a couple of points to make prior to singing its praises.
One is the way that the parts of the figures have been dissected for casting. It looks like they were perhaps made in a type of clay that requires heating to cure it – Sculpey or some such – and the sculptor has elected to split the parts by inserting a needle of some type several times to separate the legs from the torso. The joint that is left is fairly good, but will require a little filler to cover any small gaps between the two components once glued together.
The second point is that the figures pictures on the box art – Photo #1 – appear to be playing draughts or chequers ( depending which side of the pond you hail from ) and not chess. A small section of resin is supplied for the “chessboard” but no playing pieces come with the kit.
The only other point is that you’ll have to add your own rifle slings to the firearms, but that is quite usual and easier than trying to bend resin into position to look like it’s hanging naturally.
Where to start ?
Well, I thought I’d begin with the chessboard and set.
I thought that I might have an idea for how to make cess pieces, but I’d need a slightly larger chess board to enable me to do that, so photo #2 shows the beginning of that, using a square of plasticard, and I’ve used 1mm masking tape to mask off some of it for when I spray it with black paint.
Photo #3 shows a very similar picture you might think, but in actual fact I’ve sprayed the chessboard with some black paint, removed the masking and then replaced it to cover the black squares.
Photo #4 and with all the masking removed we have a nice little chessboard. The white section at the left needs trimming off.
I was going to have a border around the chessboard, but it looked too large and out of scale, so I opted to just have the squares for the actual pieces to go on instead.
Photo #5 shows some cocktail sticks with – importantly – fancy shaped ends. It had occurred to me that these could be trimmed and in a couple of cases carefully carved – for the knights and bishops – to represent the different playing pieces.
Photo #6 This initial shot shows the game part way through with a lot of the pieces having already been removed by the players. The pieces look Ok, but when placed with the two figures, the pieces seemed too large,
Photo #7 - so I trimmed down the king and queen pieces which then made the set look a lot better.
And yes, I did make a full set of playing pieces !
But where are the pieces that have been removed ?
Photo #8 Well, I found a small resin casting of a 1/35th scale “supplies” case that would be OK for the “taken” playing pieces that would eventually go by the players feet, this was filled with the rest of the pieces I’d made and some superglue added to hold them in position.
Photo #9 shows the box having been painted and a little bit of Vandyke Brown oils thinned with White Spirit and run into all the recesses between the chess pieces.
The box was painted to look a little old, beginning with Vandyke Brown oils over a sand coloured acrylic undercoat, and then adding a little bit of Mars Yellow with and old brush and painting “with the grain” of each plank so that the bristles left lines in the colour.
The brush was wiped of excess paint and then Buff Titanium was added, again making sure that lines were left in the paint to look like the woodgrain.
This would be placed on the base near to the figures once the bench and soldiers were set in place.
Now that I was confident that the chessboard would fit, I thought I’d better have a look at the bench.
Photo #10 shows it built up, but I only used the stands for each side and back, substituting the resin slats for wooden stirrers from my local KFC.
Why the change, well, because I’d made the chessboard slightly larger than the one given with the kit, I thought it best to allow a bit more room for the board and the figures, so using the stirrers allowed me to lengthen the bench by about 5mm.
Setting the scene
Photo #11 - I wanted a suitably sized plinth, and didn’t have anything that was the correct size in stock.
As usually, impatience drove me to go out and buy some solid White Oak worktop – not cheap, I nearly had to sit down – which I could cut to size, sand smooth and varnish..
I bought a fairly large piece, so I’ll be good for nice bases for the foreseeable future, and possibly beyond.
With the addition of a small random shaped section of cobbles and a bit of Chinchilla Sand mixed with Cat litter for a section of grass behind the bench, I could set the scene for a quiet park in autumn.
Photo #12 the chess set was added to the middle of the bench, and here I’ve painted the cobbles with a pale coloured acrylic and then stippled on dark brown and black acrylics with a fine sponge.
I’ve also added some Venetian Red to the parts of the bench that would attract rust, and on the cobbles around the feet of the bench, where the rust would run to when it rained.
Photo #13 and I’ve added Static Grass with an applicator that gives the falling particles of grass a charge as it passes through a sieve and makes the grass stand to attention when it hits the base.
By spraying the area that I wanted the grass on with some Isopropyl Alcohol, than adding watered-down Matt Acrylic Medium ( which would act as the adhesive to fix the Static Grass in place ) the grass fibres will stand up and appear as grass that perhaps hasn’t seen a lawn-mower in a while.
Photo #14 and a view of the back of the scene. Once fully dry the grass area is treated to “a going over” with a small hand-held vacuum to pick off any bits that are loose or stray.
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