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LEGO patented its signature “binding brick” in 1958. But it wasn’t until nearly 50 years later, in 2005, that LEGO released its first official chess build.

I learned this fact while researching this article. And even as someone who spends most of his idle time building and learning about LEGO, it surprised me. Why had it taken so long? LEGO Chess seemed, at least in my mind, a given – an easy, marketable way to make bricks accessible to a wide audience.

But in 2005, LEGO’s audience was primarily children. The company did not widely cater to its adult audience until 2007. And the idea of LEGO lifestyle branding – of integrating brick-built things into a non-brick living space – didn’t truly take off until around 2020.

What we now take for granted in 2025 was unprecedented in 2005. when the first LEGO chess set debuted. And it was unheard of in the prior decades, when the majority of builds were miniature playsets, rather than depictions of real-life things.

Here’s an ordered history of every LEGO Chess Set. There are 12 in all, including the only one that’s currently available to buy in 2025. You can also check out our guide to the best overall chess sets for more options.

All LEGO Chess Sets In Order of Release

1. Knights’ Kingdom Chess Set – Retired

The first LEGO chess set was part of the Knight’s Kingdom, an expansion of the LEGO Castle brand. It featured two Armies: the Shadow Knights, led by evil sorcerer Vladek, and the Kingdom of Morcia, led by King Matthias. The set included 24 minifigures with detailed armor and stylized shields.

2. Vikings Chess Set – Retired

Very similar to the Knight’s Kingdom set from the prior year, the Vikings set also included 24 minifigures, this time wearing archetypal horned viking helmets along with spears and axes for weapons.

3. Castle Chess Set – Retired

Another Castle-themed set, the Castle set was a bit more generic than its Knight’s Kingdom counterpart. It pitted an army of crown knights against an undead army of skeletons. The best part of the set was the Grim Reaper bishops, which had massive scythes for weapons.

4. Giant Chess Set – Retired

Still the largest, most ornate chess set that LEGO ever designed (by a considerable margin), the Giant Chess Set was bigger and better in every way. The board itself was two feet long on all sides, and it came with four miniature builds of the skeleton realm, the troll realm, the dwarf realm, and the castle realm.

The board was smooth rather than studded, which gave it a more elegant look. And the individual pieces were the best looking yet. The bishops were wizards. The knights were minifigures on horseback. And the rooks were heavily fortified siege towers.

5. Pirates Chess Set – Retired

The first pirates-themed set pitted a Royal Navy against a motley crew of pirates. I loved this set’s variety; whereas every naval officer pawn looked mostly the same, every pirate pawn had a unique costume and accessory. And best of all, the pirate knight was a curly-tailed monkey, armed with a knife. It doesn’t get more chaotic than that.

6. Multi Game Pack 9-in-1 – Retired

This was a travel-friendly, tiny set that allowed you to play nine different classic board games: Ludo, Chess, Checkers, Solitaire, Backgammon, Fireman Hoses and Ladders, and three different cards for Travel Bingo.

7. Kingdoms Chess Set – Retired

This Castle-themed set depicted a Green Dragon army versus a Red Lion army. The individual minifigures had a lot of character and detail. A definite highlight was the Red Lion knight, a Jester with a big, cartoonish smile. The board is mounted on a unique baseplate with a bastion in each corner.

This was the first LEGO chess set that didn’t come with a carry case, nor did it have a separate storage compartment for its pieces. This set wasn’t designed with travel in mind, and it’s an early example of LEGO that’s designed for display rather than play.

8. Pirates Chess Set #2 – Retired

The second Pirates-themed chess set had an outdoor beach theme, with sand on one side of the set and ocean on the other. This was the first LEGO chess board to have smooth squares with single studs in their centers, which was more aesthetically pleasing and functional than the baseplate boards that came prior.

9. Iconic Chess Set – Retired

This was the first time that LEGO released a chess set with no gimmicks and no minifigures — just a regular chess set with blocky, traditional pieces, and space beneath the board to store them all. This set had longevity; it stayed on shelves for seven years before LEGO retired it at the end of 2022.

10. Steampunk Mini Chess – Retired

Designed by user CorvusA, this tiny set was a collaboration between LEGO and LEGO fansite BrickLink. The BrickLink AFOL (Adult Fans of LEGO) Designer Program launched 13 fan-designed sets, including this one, in 2019.

11. Hogwarts Wizard’s Chess Set – Retired

This set recreated the iconic scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, when Harry, Hermione, and Ron faced the chess trial, and Ron sacrificed himself to checkmate the King. This LEGO Harry Potter set came with three minifigures to represent the “Trio.”

As Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio get ready to return to action for Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+, the question has come up once again about how Matt Murdock’s time hanging out with Tatiana Maslany’s She-Hulk fits into the overall chronology of the Man Without Fear.

Cox guest-starred on the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law in 2022, but the tone of that show was much more fun and light as compared to the heaviness of Netflix’s Daredevil and the upcoming Born Again. Plus, Matt Murdock had a different costume in She-Hulk! This is the kind of thing that drives comics fans crazy, but the actor thinks it all makes perfect sense.

First off, he acknowledges that those episodes take place before Born Again. “I think it’s a case of whatever was going on with Matt in that period of time,” Cox tells IGN. “He was able to leave that in JFK when he got on the plane.” He also jokes that “what happens in L.A. stays in L.A.”

The actor is very aware of the polarizing response Daredevil’s time on She-Hulk received. “It’s funny how many opinions I’ve heard about this little moment in She-Hulk,” he continues. “There’s the Walk of Shame, which was a last-minute idea where they set up a big green screen and just had me walk across it carrying my shoes. And a lot of people don’t like it, and a lot of people love it.”

Still, essentially the version of Matt seen in She-Hulk wouldn’t really work in his own show. But that’s kind of how it’s always gone with superhero stories.

“If you take the Matt Murdock from our show and you put him in She-Hulk as-is, he’s probably overly serious and becomes the butt of all jokes,” says Cox. “So he’s got to adapt to the tone. And there’s precedent within the comics. There are many runs of the comics where there’s a lot of levity, there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek, a lot of fun.”

“Hawkeye was the same for me,” adds D’Onofrio, who returned as Wilson Fisk for that MCU series.

“It’s an opportunity,” continues Cox. “It’s a whole different [kind of] fun with that. And maybe at some point we’ll get to see the favor returned.”

Another question that’s in the air once again is regarding how exactly the previous Netflix adventures of Murdock and Fisk fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cox says that both shows are “for sure, 100%” set in the same universe, and D’Onofrio adds that he considers Born Again “a fourth season” of the old show.

The reason why this was ever even a question is because the Netflix series (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher), while very interconnected themselves, were never quite acknowledged by the movie side of the MCU. The Netflix Marvel shows debuted in 2015 with Daredevil and continued until 2019, but in all that time they were basically cordoned off from the Avengers side of things. This, we have learned over the years, was in part due to behind-the-scenes jockeying between Marvel and Disney execs who didn’t want to share their toys, basically.

But the Netflix/Marvel deal eventually ended and the House of Ideas was able to fully incorporate the characters into the MCU proper. Cox appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021, and then later in She-Hulk and Echo, while D’Onofrio popped up in Hawkeye and Echo too.

When their Netflix show ended in 2018, Cox and D’Onofrio actually had very different takes on their chances of ever continuing as, respectively, the Man Without Fear and the Kingpin of Crime.

“I was convinced we were done,” says Cox of returning as Matt Murdock at that point. “And when we got that [cancellation] phone call in 2018, I moved on emotionally, obviously, being quite sad about the whole thing. But Vince and I would talk occasionally, and he was convinced that at some point we would get a phone call, and we’d be back. And I would get off the phone and think that he was crazy! So when I heard from Kevin Feige in 2020, I was shocked, blown away.”

D’Onofrio figured that they had “knocked it out the park” with the Netflix show, and his instincts proved to be correct. It would’ve been tough for fans to accept new actors as Daredevil and Kingpin, despite the fact that they took a break from playing those characters. That also carried over to Cox and D’Onofrio’s castmates, Deborah Ann Woll who plays Karen Page and Elden Henson who plays Foggy Nelson.

In fact, as originally conceived, Born Again was not going to include those versions of Karen and Foggy. But about halfway through production on the show, Marvel execs decided to make some changes. New writers and directors were brought in to revamp what had already been shot with an idea to re-centering the series on the Netflix version where it had all started.

“That was tough for me to swallow,” says D’Onofrio. “I know we felt emotional about not having the others back. … Because our success in that show, we believe, is not just because of us and the writing. We believe it’s because of the whole cast and the writing. … Elden and Deborah, those characters are theirs now. Nobody will ever play those characters as well as they did, as far as I’m concerned. And they needed to be part of the family.”

All that said, the actors are also aware that tonally the Netflix show and Born Again tend to skew a bit darker than the more family-friendly MCU.

“We’re put in these positions all the time,” says D’Onofrio. “But I will just say, because it’s my favorite thing to say, our job is to service a story. And when it’s put in front of us from a company like Marvel, you’re like, ‘O.K., I’ll service that story to the best of my ability.’ That’s what our job is.”

For more on Daredevil: Born Again, keep checking back at IGN in the lead-up to the premiere!

Did you see our reveal of Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy crossover last week and think to yourself, “video games are all well and good, but where are the superheroes?” Well then do I have great news for you: Today we’ve got a first look at six new cards from Magic’s upcoming Spider-Man set, as well as all the products and packaging that will accompany it.

Click through the image gallery below to see all the Spider-Man cards from its Commander-focused Scene Box, booster packs, Welcome Decks, and more, and read on to hear about the set from Wizards of the Coast.

Arriving September 26, Marvel’s Spider-Man will be the second fully draftable, Standard-legal set in Magic’s Universes Beyond line of products after Final Fantasy, and the third overall after 2023’s Modern-legal Lord of the Rings set. It won’t have any preconstructed Commander decks like you might expect, but the cards in the Scene Box shown above won’t be Standard-legal, and are instead designed with Commander in mind.

While a Secret Lair with Wolverine, Captain America, and more was the first step Magic took into the Marvel universe last year, Spider-Man will also be the first full set inspired by the comics so far. Wizards of the Coast Executive Producer Max McCall says that’s because they just wouldn’t have had room for all of the characters and moments they wanted to include from Spider-Man if they had made a smaller product instead.

“Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character, and incorporate the many villains he’s come across over the years,” McCall explains. “Picking characters from the Spider-Man canon as part of a wider set would leave far too many characters on the cutting room floor. We could probably have found room for Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales in a non-Spider-Man specific set, but there wouldn’t have been room for Aunt May.”

McCall says that designing for a Universes Beyond set “flips the worldbuilding on its head,” in that a typical Magic set needs its cards to lay the groundwork of its location and setting while also being fun to play with in order to get players on board, whereas most people already have some familiarity with a character like Spider-Man. “When we make a card that speaks to great power bearing great responsibility, there’s room to add mechanical complexity because folks understand the story the card is telling. We don’t have to make Universes Beyond cards that are ‘simple’ – we just have to pick moments that are recognizable, and they’ll be easy for fans to understand.”

As for how exactly they translate those moments and the world around them into a Magic set, Head Designer Mark Rosewater tells me Magic’s color pie “is robust enough that we have the ability to show heroism and villainy in all five colors.” As an example, Rosewater says Spider-Man would be white, blue, and green (although the specific version in the Scene Box above is only those first two).

“Spider-Man feeling obligated to use his power to help people is core to him being part of the white color pie. Spider-Man is also the product of science, being bitten by a radioactive spider. This, and Peter’s aptitude for science and invention (like his web-slingers) is very blue. Finally, Spider-Man’s powers are based on an animal, and the comics have shown that there is a certain destiny to his connection to both spiders and the Spider-Man universe, which is all core green.”

In addition to the Scene Box, the set will have the usual Play Boosters, Collector Boosters, Bundles, and Prerelease Packs, all of which can also be seen in the gallery above with more details. And while there won’t be any preconstructed Commander decks, this will mark the return of Welcome Decks – those are themed introductory decks typically given out by game stores for free so that new players can have a low-pressure way to learn the game.

In addition to this year’s Final Fantasy set, Wizards of the Coast also recently announced a set themed around Avatar: The Last Airbender. There will also be two more in-universe sets before that in Tarkir: Dragontsorm and the space-themed Edge of Eternities.

Read on for the full, unedited interview with Wizards of the Coast’s Max McCall and Mark Rosewater:

IGN: Wizards of the Coast obviously has big long-term plans for Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Marvel, but why did you start with Spider-Man when it comes to the first full set in that universe?

Max McCall, Executive Producer: Spider-Man needs a full set to do justice to the character, and incorporate the many villains he’s come across over the years. Picking characters from the Spider-Man canon as part of a wider set would leave far too many characters on the cutting room floor. We could probably have found room for Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales in a non-Spider-Man specific set, but there wouldn’t have been room for Aunt May. We could include Green Goblin, but not the full Sinister Six. Spider-Man has so many iconic moments and characters that we wanted to make sure we got as many as possible onto the cards, and a Spider-Man set was the best way to do that.

You’ve spoken previously about how you see Universes Beyond as a great way to introduce new players to Magic, and Spider-Man seems primed to be an especially good example of that. With that new player experience in mind, did you approach this set differently than you would a Universes Within set in any ways?

MM: Designing Universes Beyond sets is an interesting challenge because it flips the worldbuilding on its head. Cards designed for a new world like Bloomburrow have to introduce folks to the world in addition to being fun game pieces. Cards designed for Spider-Man don’t have to introduce people to Spider-Man – everyone’s familiar with Spider-Man at some level – but they do have to pay off folks’ conception of the characters and the big canon moments.

That is a huge opportunity when designing for an acquisition audience – new players are going to recognize the story moments we put on cards. So, when we make a card that speaks to great power bearing great responsibility, there’s room to add mechanical complexity because folks understand the story the card is telling. We don’t have to make Universes Beyond cards that are ‘simple’ – we just have to pick moments that are recognizable, and they’ll be easy for fans to understand.

Can you talk a bit about how you fit Spider-Man’s characters or themes into Magic’s color pie?

Mark Rosewater, Head Designer: In terms of Magic’s color pie, Spider-Man is white, blue and green. Spider-Man feeling obligated to use his power to help people is core to him being part of the white color pie. Spider-Man is also the product of science, being bitten by a radioactive spider. This, and Peter’s aptitude for science and invention (like his web-slingers) is very blue. Finally, Spider-Man’s powers are based on an animal, and the comics have shown that there is a certain destiny to his connection to both spiders and the Spider-Man universe, which is all core green.

Are there any challenges to keeping those colors both interesting and accurate in a Super Hero universe?

MR: The color pie is robust enough that we have the ability to show heroism and villainy in all five colors. Every color has positive and negative qualities allowing us to have a lot of nuances to how we use them.

I imagine “spider typal” Commander decks are about to get some unexpected new toys across this set – do you take any special considerations into account when a common Magic creature type holds a very different meaning in the context of a Universes Beyond setting?

MM: Specifics matter a lot with issues like this. Often, we’re playing in the same trope space as our Universes Beyond partners – things like ‘assassins’ are rarely an issue. Spider-Man will of course contain many Spiders, but a lot of the deckbuilding hooks for those characters will key more into the Hero creature type.

The Final Fantasy set is going to stretch across many different games and stories, but should we expect this set to have a specific Spider-Man story, or are you treating it as a showcase of popular characters, events, and locations from the comics?

MM: Spider-Man features characters and stories from across its history – we’re not limiting ourselves to any one run or series.

Marvel comics are beloved by a huge audience, but there’s no denying that the MCU has dominated the public perception of these characters in recent years. Was it tricky to design around the comic book versions with that in mind, or did you enjoy getting back to some of their roots instead?

MR: The Marvel expansions are based on the comics, but we’re always aware of the movies’ impact, so we find overlap when we can. Luckily, the vast majority of the movie material was based on the comics.

With the Spider-Man scene box, why did you go the route of including four legendary creatures this time rather than building a box around a single character as a little Commander starter pack of sorts like the previous ones were?

MM: Scene boxes tell visual stories. Spider-Man’s storytelling is very character-driven and has a great rogue’s gallery, so we wanted to include as many characters as possible. You’re generally not going to have Spider-Man and villains in the same Commander deck, so once we committed to lots of characters, we knew that meant you wouldn’t be putting them all in the same deck, and so that made for a great opportunity to make each villain more distinct and emphasize their different goals and methods in the card designs.

Spider-Man is going to be included, of course, but how did you land on the other three characters for this debut?

MM: Doc Ock, Venom, and Green Goblin are of course way up there when you’re making a list of iconic Spider-Man villains, but the nature of those characters makes it easier to draw a scene where they all get equal visual weight. Green Goblin on his glider doesn’t get in the way of Doc Ock’s tentacles, and Venom can be lurking anywhere for a chance to strike – they all have their own space in the scene to shine.

Is it freeing to design cards for a product like this since they don’t have to fit into the context of a larger set or preconstructed deck?

MM: Yes – the goal is exciting, appealing cards, preferably light enough on text that the art can really shine throughout the scene. Not having mechanical constraints makes this much easier – they don’t have to pay off the rest of the set’s themes or mechanics, and that gives them room to be made charming and delightful of their own accord.

Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

LEGO announced earlier this year that we’d be getting new Minecraft Movie sets, and the time has finally come for them to be released into the world. There are four new Minecraft sets that you can now buy, with two of them featuring scenes from the upcoming film. These new sets are added to an ever-growing list of LEGO Minecraft sets that have been accumulating over the years.

Each of the new Minecraft Movie sets features minifigure mobs, but only two of the sets offer up a tiny Jack Black as Steve. You can currently purchase all of these sets from LEGO directly or any of the other best places to buy LEGO.

New LEGO Minecraft Sets Available Now

Although there are four new LEGO Minecraft sets coming out, the two that are associated with the movie are The Ghast Balloon Village Attack and Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring. Both sets give us an idea of what to expect from the upcoming film. The Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring depicts some sort of gladiator style battle with Jason Momoa fighting a baby zombie on a chicken. Meanwhile the Ghast Balloon Village Attack set reveals a marshamallow-like villain from the Nether.

The other two Minecraft sets that are releasing are The Parrot Houses and The Trial Chamber. For more like these, you can check out more of our favorite LEGO Minecraft sets.

When Does the New Minecraft Movie Come Out?

LEGO tends to release new sets tied to movie releases about a month before the actual release of the film. The new Minecraft sets are following the same timeline by coming out on March 1 seeing as A Minecraft movie is hitting theaters on April 4, 2025.

Will There Be More Minecraft Movie Sets?

So far the two sets we’ve featured above are the only ones set to release alongside the film. It’s possible this could change if the live-action Minecraft movie is a success. Either way, there are new LEGO Minecraft sets released fairly consistently and we can likely expect more to release later this year, even if it isn’t directly tied to the movie.

If you’re still looking to get your hands on Sword & Shield-era booster packs, these tins are worth checking out. The sets featured in them include some of the strongest cards from the generation, including alternate art chase cards to competitive staples.

UK Deals: Sword and Shield Pokémon TCG Booster Packs Are Drying Up, Grab These Tins Now

Each tin includes a foil promo card and a selection of packs that vary in value. Brilliant Stars and Lost Origins have decent pull rates and well-loved cards. Other sets like Fusion Strike and Vivid Voltage can be hit or miss depending on what you are after. If you fancy picking one up, here is what each tin offers.

Pokémon TCG: Pikachu V Showcase Box (1 Foil Promo Card and 3 Booster Packs)

Pokémon TCG: Divergent Powers Tin – Hisuian Samurott V

Pokémon Hidden Potential Tin – Rotom V

Pokémon TCG: Divergent Powers Tin – Hisuian Typhlosion V

Pokémon TCG: V Heroes Tin Espeon

Buried like some kind of cursed treasure at the bottom of this week’s episode of the official Xbox Podcast was news about Playground Games’ long-awaited Fable. I call it “treasure” because it included a rare glimpse at gameplay, but “cursed” because it came with that dreaded caveat that accompanies so many development updates: a delay. Once planned to launch this year, Fable is now set for a 2026 release.

Delays, of course, are generally not harbingers of doom, despite the agonising wait they inflict. In Fable’s case, hopefully this is the sign of a richly detailed world that just needs more time to bloom. But that extra year of waiting can be put to good use: there’s no better time to play the Fable games. Specifically, I’d urge you to try Fable 2, the series’ highpoint, and (re)discover just what a strange and unique RPG Lionhead Studios’ 2008 classic is.

By today’s role-playing game standards, Fable 2 is really quite unusual. But even compared to its 2008 contemporaries, which includes the likes of Fallout 3 (released just days later) and BioWare’s early 3D games, it is practically singular in its vision. While Fable 2 features a fairly traditional campaign structure, with a linear main story and an esoteric collection of optional side quests, its RPG systems are a far cry from the crunchy stat blocks of Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights. It completely smooths out those aspects to create something incredibly approachable, even for those who find a D&D character sheet indistinguishable from hieroglyphics.

Just six main skills govern the likes of your health pool, strength, and speed. There’s only a single damage stat to consider when it comes to weapons, and nothing of the sort when it comes to armour or buff-providing accessories. Combat, despite being prevalent throughout most quests, is incredibly surface swashbuckling, spiced up only through the use of some genuinely creative spellcasting (including the wonderful Chaos, which forces enemies to dance and scrub the floors.) You’re even imperious to death – losing all your hitpoints is punished with nothing more than a minor XP penalty.

In short, Fable 2 is the RPG for people who have never played RPGs before. Back in 2008, when Oblivion’s open world Cyrodiil may have felt overwhelmingly huge and imposingly freeform for role-playing newbies, Fable 2’s Albion offered a more manageable chain of small, easy-to-navigate maps. You can freely go back and forth between these areas and, with the aid of your faithful canine companion who barks at the merest sign of adventure, you can tread beyond the beaten path to discover secrets like buried treasure, sunken caves, and the puzzle-posing Demon Doors. All this lends the world a sense of scale and opportunity grander than its actual footprint. But Albion’s geography is restrictive, largely forcing you down linear pathways from one landmark to another. This isn’t a world to get lost in, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.

Albion as a physical entity pales in comparison to the incredible worlds of BioWare’s Infinity Engine games and Bethesda’s wonderfully weird Morrowind. But to judge it on both modern and contemporary expectations of RPGs is to do it a disservice. Fable 2’s priorities lie not in climbing far-off mountains or spelunking through dungeons with a myriad of routes, but in a world that is bustling with life. Look at Fable 2 through the lens of a very different game – Maxis’ similarly singular The Sims – and you’ll find a truly remarkable simulation of society.