Courier Chess Set - Medieval Game, Travel Size

The Game

Chess hasn't always been played by its modern orthodox rules. One notable contributor to the evolution of chess is the 12th-century German game of Courier Chess, which the Germans called Läuferspiel or Kurierspiel (“Runners’ Game”). It is this version that's depicted in Lucas van Leyden's famous 1508 painting "The Game of Chess". With couriers, archers, a sage, and a fool, it’s every bit as awesome as it sounds.

Rules of the Game

The trouble is that 12x8 "widescreen" chessboards and the additional pieces necessary to play this game have been hard to come by in the past couple of centuries. Well, with a 3D printer that's a solvable problem.

Design Notes

My goal is to produce the most historically accurate practicable recreation of actual medieval Courier Chess that can be done with a one-piece board on a 270x270mm print bed. Each square measures 21.5mm. If you'd like a larger version, then check out my Actual-Size Courier Chess Set, which includes the option of printing its rather wide board in two pieces.

This board measures 262mm in width, leaving just enough margin for spiral z-hop moves. It prints face-down to produce a surface as smooth and consistent as the print bed itself. I modeled it as a parametric OpenSCAD script, which can actually be used to generate a checkered grid with any number of ranks and files, not just 8x12.

I've provided a Snapmaker Orca project consisting of a full Courier Chess army of 25 (including an extra queen for promotion) on plate 1 and a full 8x12 board on plate 2. Print plate 1 twice: once in white and once in black. It'll take about an hour and a half per army. Supports are unnecessary. Since the shapes are inherently more stable than those of modern Staunton-style chessmen, weighting is also unnecessary. Note that the king consists of two parts to be assembled post-print.

Then print plate 2, a one-piece multicolor chessboard. This takes about 5 hours. If you use a different slicer than Snapmaker Orca, you may need to reselect colors.

Suggested Print Settings

• Global

  • Nozzle Size: 0.4mm

  • Layer Height: 0.15mm

  • Walls: 3

  • Walls on Top: 1

  • Wall Generator: Arachne

  • Seam Position: Random

  • Infill: 15% Cross Hatch

  • Prime Tower: None

• Plate 1 - Chessmen

  • Top Pattern: Concentric

  • Outer Brim: 5mm so they don’t slide around

  • Brim-object gap: 0.2mm for easy separation

  • King

    • XY Compensation: 0.05mm for contours & holes, to beef up the fragile spindle

Credits

Both the board and the chessmen are based on van Leyden's painting. The volume of each chessman is roughly proportional to its value. I modeled the board myself. The chessman models, by Victronix, are included with her permission at 60% of their original scale.

See Also