It can be easy to forget, but a chess game is a battle. And while you’re sitting there, scratching your chin and trying to feel smart, soldiers are dying at your command. This clever chess set designed by Orr Kislev helps you keep that in mind by leaving all the corpses on the board.
Taking a cue from checkers — kind of — Capture features minimalistic aluminum-milled pieces that are stackable so you can place the victor on top of his victim instead of just setting the slain aside. That way, the one particularly badass pawn that’s been hacking his way across the board can get a little recognition for his hard work. Likewise the rook that finally takes him out can inherit the badassery.
Admittedly, kill-counts are totally non-indicative of who is winning any particular game of chess, so this little gimmick is just a gimmick, but it’s a cool one. Kislev is an industrial design student at the Holon Institute of Technology, in Israel, and the set is just coursework, so there’s nowhere you can buy it, for the moment. It’s an awesomely visceral twist on an intellectual game.. And it’s pretty to boot. Hopefully you can pick one up someday. [MoLoCo via Co.Design]