This spherical chess board uses magnets to change up the game

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a magnetic chess board, but it’s probably one of the more innovative takes on the game: a globe-shaped board.

A design student named Ben Myers created the unique board with his father, according to The Verge.

He posted his process on Instructables, noting that he made the board out walnut, soft maple, and Jatoba wood, which he measured out and cut to exact dimensions and glued onto eight octagonal rings. Each space has a magnet embedded in it, and once he glued each side together, he used a lathe to turn it into a sphere.

The magnets allow players to move their pieces all over the globe, even upside down. Myers says he was surprised at how the game changed with the board as a globe: he thought “that the rooks would be more powerful because a spherical board lacked vertical edges. I was proven wrong very quickly. Without the side edges of the board, the bishops became very deadly.”

The curved surface also provides players with an added level of complexity, as they can’t see all the pieces at the same time.