Antisol
Jove Mirror

Jungle Chess has eight ranks and every other set makes you learn them. Here the ranks are the eight planets, and a world's size on the board is the fifth root of its real measured diameter — so Mercury is the smallest thing in play, Jupiter is the largest, and which piece beats which is something you look at.

The eight Sol worlds standing in a row on their white discs, smallest to largest: a grey Mercury, red Mars, amber Venus, blue-and-green Earth, banded blue Neptune, plain cyan Uranus with an upright hoop, ringed yellow Saturn, and a banded orange Jupiter carrying its red spot. Each disc wall shows a seven-segment rank numeral.
  1. Mercury4,879 kmØ 13.78 mm
  2. Mars6,779 kmØ 14.72 mm
  3. Venus12,104 kmØ 16.53 mm
  4. Earth12,742 kmØ 16.70 mm
  5. Neptune49,244 kmØ 21.89 mm
  6. Uranus50,724 kmØ 22.02 mm
  7. Saturn116,460 kmØ 26.00 mm
  8. Jupiter139,820 kmØ 26.97 mm
One army, off the board and in order. The numeral inlaid in each disc wall is the same rank the globe already states.

globe mm = 13.785 × (Dkm ÷ 4,879)0.2

Real diameters would be no use: Jupiter is nearly thirty times Mercury across, and a piece thirty times another does not share a board. A fifth root keeps the order exactly and folds the range down to something a hand can hold — 13.78 mm at the bottom, 26.97 mm at the top, eight globes that all stand inside the same 36 mm cell. The exponent is the only liberty taken. Every diameter going into it is a fact-sheet number.

Two suns,
16 worlds

The field

Seven files, nine ranks, and rules nobody had to invent: Dou Shou Qi, in the public domain and followed as written. The 12 brown cells across the middle are the asteroid belt, and only the smallest world in play may set foot in them.

A star at each end

A star stands on the last cell of each side, with two flames that rise 18 mm above the field at the board edge — the only raised flames anywhere on it. Walk one of your worlds onto the opposite star and the game is over.

The corona

The three cells ringing each star are traps, and here they are wells: the tile floors its pocket 3 mm below the field. So the largest world in the set can stand on one, out of the light, and be worth nothing while it does.

Rank you can see

The 8 Sol worlds, lifted off their opening cells and stood in order. Nothing in this row is styling: 4,879 km of Mercury becomes 13.78 mm of plastic and 139,820 km of Jupiter becomes 26.97 mm, by one formula with no exceptions in it.

The same world, twice

Both armies are the same eight planets. What tells them apart is the lean: every marking is rotated by that planet's real axial tilt, and the two armies lean their poles to opposite sides of the board. On Saturn the ring leans with it, so the mirror lands in the silhouette.

Jove

Jupiter's tilt is 3.13°, so its two pieces stand 6.26° apart — a mirror with nothing in it. On Jupiter, and on Mercury and Venus, the map is mirrored instead, and the Great Red Spot moves 6.2 mm between the two pieces.

Matter faces antimatter

Both armies are the same eight planets — 16 worlds in all, 8 a side. There is no red army and no blue one: the whole ownership cue is that each pair is a mirror of itself. Sol stands on a white disc with a black numeral, Anti-Sol on black with white, and the globe above the disc leans the other way.

Two Jupiter pieces side by side. The left stands on a black disc with a white seven-segment 8, and its Great Red Spot has moved out to the right edge of the globe. The right stands on a white disc with a black 8, and the same spot sits well inside the face. The wavy cloud belts run the other way round on the two globes.
The Anti-Sol Jupiter, left, and the Sol Jupiter beside it. Jupiter is the hard one: its belts and zones are bands of latitude, and a band of latitude is the same at every longitude, so mirroring the map does not move them at all. Three things on this globe carry a longitude — the Great Red Spot, its collar and the wave along the two widest belts — and the whole mirror has to be read off an oval 3.06 mm long. On the Anti-Sol piece it sits 6.2 mm round from where it sits on its twin: twice the length of the spot itself, on a globe 26.97 mm across.

The lean is not a styling decision either. It is the planet's own axial tilt, so how much mirror a world has to give is a fact about that world rather than a choice. Of the eight, 5 have plenty of it and 3 have almost none — and those three are the ones that carry a mirrored map instead. Below, each pair of strokes is the real angle between one world's two pieces.

  1. Mercury0.06°map
  2. Venus5.28°map
  3. Jupiter6.26°map
  4. Earth46.88°lean
  5. Mars50.38°lean
  6. Saturn53.46°lean
  7. Neptune56.64°lean
  8. Uranus164.46°lean

42 pieces of plastic

Nothing in this set is assembled, because there is nothing to assemble. Every world is one printed part in several filaments — disc, numeral, globe and the markings that name the planet — and there is no fastener, no press fit and no bought hardware anywhere in the box.

The printed set on a white surface: the grey board set up with all sixteen worlds on their opening cells, the brown asteroid-belt tiles down the middle, the orange and cyan trap tiles at each end, and the two grey storage trays lying beside it.
16 worlds, a board in 4 panels, 12 belt tiles, 6 trap tiles, two star plugs and two trays: 42 printed parts, cut from 24 distinct geometries in 13 filaments of one PLA stock.

Why the board comes apart

The field is 36 mm a cell, seven files by nine ranks, which puts 268 × 340 mm of board on the table — more than a 200 mm bed will take. It is cut after file c and after rank 4 into 4 unequal panels, the largest 188 mm on its long side. The grid is not printed on: every boundary between two cells is a 1.2 × 0.6 mm groove cut into the field, so it cannot wear off.

Two trays

One per player, 8 blind sockets each on a 38 mm pitch. Every socket is 34.4 mm across because every disc is the same disc, so a world goes back wherever there is a hole. A set that is complete looks complete.

The same set drawn from above at an angle, with both storage trays lifted clear of the board so the full arrangement is visible: board at the front, the two eight-socket trays behind it.
Board first, then both trays: the arrangement the overall figure measures, and the arrangement the set was drawn in. Over all of it, 13.7 × 19.3 × 1.5 in.

Measured, not estimated

Every diameter below came off a planetary fact sheet and through one formula; every millimetre came off the built solids; the weight and the time came off the slicer over the real mesh. Nothing here was typed in because it sounded right.

Set, laid out
13.7 × 19.3 × 1.5 in
Board
10.6 × 13.4 in
Weight
18.3 oz
Printed parts
42, from 24 geometries
Coloured solids
220
Filaments
13, one PLA stock
Plate time
46.7 hours
Worlds
16, 8 a side
Globes
Ø 13.78 to 26.97 mm
Piece height
16.78 to 29.97 mm
Disc
Ø 34 mm, widest 33.87 mm
Cell pitch
36 mm
Nozzle and layer
0.4 mm, 0.2 mm
Bed needed
200 mm, flat, no supports
Thinnest wall
0.8 mm, worst case 1.2 mm rib
Hardware
None