Bestagon Three-Person Chess - Travel

Are you a bit bored of the classic chess game? I certainly was feeling like that so I designed this three-person chess set that easily folds up so you can take it around with you wherever.

 

The game is really fun! Even though the movements of the pieces are pretty much the same, having an extra area and an extra player in addition to the hexagon board creates some really cool social and playing dynamics that are unlike anything in traditional chess. You may be making the case to one of your opponents that you should team up to face a common great threat while secretly plotting their downfall. You'll be scrambling to gain control of one of the two Great Diagonals which give you a really fast way to travel across the board quick (hold on to those bishops, those are seriously threatening pieces in this board). But most of all is a really fun game for three that gets you thinking a little differently than traditional chess and will probably make you blunder many times with moves you hadn't considered due to the bent trajectories of some pieces. It throws some randomness to a very skill dominated game which can make it more fun to less skilled players.

 

And… honoring the spirit of “the Hexagon is the Bestagon”, hexagonical features are incorporated into the design of each of the pieces!

 

The whole set is designed with portability in mind and is divided into 6 sections which the pieces can be securely placed on so they don't rattle too much as they travel. Then you cover them, stack them and put the straps around to secure everything in place. The assembled piece is surprisingly sturdy so it is really good if you want to take it with you camping or such.

The models have some refining to do that I didn't have time to, difficult to nail things like tolerances and some gaps between the panels, but the functionality will not be affected whatsoever. Depending on the success of it I might go back and revise a few models for ease of use printability and looks.

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Printing

Everything is designed to be printed in PLA. I recommend using a black PLA that is not too dark as it makes it difficult to tell some of the pieces apart.

There are two printing versions depending whether you have AMS or not. Using the AMS will save you some filament (80 grams or so) and time, but if you don't have access to it you can print the tile pieces and just glue them together with superglue or any other glue that works. There are instructions on the plates as to how many times and in what colors you have to print each one and the recommended surface finish.

Make sure to adjust the ironing settings to your filament or just disable it if you are unsure for best results.

Cooling on the overhangs of the straps is sensitive so make sure to give it the best chance by opening the door in an enclosed printer.

Assembly

After printing the assembly is very straight forward. With the non-AMS just glue the tiles to the base plate and with both versions you have to glue the aligning disks to the indentation of the covers to ease with the stacking of each board section. Note that one of that covers doesn't have any indents on it. That's the one that goes on the top along with the “boomerang” linking pads which go inside of that cover which is a little taller to accommodate for that. For the pieces you place them inside one of the sections and cover them with the taller covers taking note of the shorter section meant to hold the pawns which are a bit shorter.

Rules of the game

If you are not sure about the rules of this chess variant you can check them out here.