Because of the fact that I wasn’t terribly thrilled with this month’s free promos and the fact that I had already ordered most of the March 2015 LEGO sets that I wanted online early, I almost didn’t bother to make me usual weekly trip to the LEGO Store this week. But because I really wanted that April 2015 LEGO Store Calendar, I made the trip–and go to see several sets in-person for the first time, including the awesome LEGO Pirates Chess Set 40158!

I’m pretty “withit” when I come to new LEGO sets being released, but somewhere along the lines the final LEGO Pirates 2015 set managed to sneak right past me: the 40158 Pirates Chess set.

For whatever reason, I assumed that the LEGO Pirates sets I saw displayed at the New York Toy Fair 2015 last month were the only new sets coming in the Pirates theme this year. Of course, it slipped my mind that retailer exclusives are typically not shown at the event.

And thus, I walked into my local LEGO Store this week and had my eyes go wide when I saw the new version of the Pirates LEGO Chess set hanging out on the shelf.

The 2015 LEGO Chess Set is every bit as cool as you’d imagine, with a 14″ by 9″ brick-built chess board and 32 brick-built playing pieces (including twenty–yes, twenty–minifigures)! Even if you don’t absolutely love chess, if you want to army-build LEGO Pirates minifigures, LEGO 40158 is the set to buy!

While you can get a cheap chess set for under $10 in most toy stores, this amazing chess set will cost you six times that. Even so, it’s a great value–$59.99 for 857 pieces works out to be just 7 cents per piece. I don’t think anyone would argue against that being an overall outstanding value!

The 40158 LEGO Pirates Chess Set is available for pre-order on the online LEGO Store (currently it’s back-ordered while they await a restock), and is also available exclusively at official LEGO brand stores. I’m not even halfway decent as a chess player (Go is more my game), but I just had to pick this set up when I saw it in the store!

How do you like this year’s last–and most unique–Pirates set, LEGO fans? Are you looking forward to picking up this set for some game time, just for its great minifigure assortment, or not at all?