Beautiful Scene! Although one thing I noticed was a strange outline on the king’s base on the right.
Thanks. I’m not sure what outline you’re referring to.
A very well produced set and staging. Felting the bases etc. Top job.
As it is so good. If being super critical, The park bench wood is lacking displacement, roughness.
The sharp edges, as in the knight in the last image are ‘perfect’. Rather than the realism that suggests beveling such edges by tiny amounts.
Likewise, I find the pawn’s ring below the head unrealistically sharp for a wood turning.
What I can’t work out is why the white pieces are less convincing to me, the dark wood is great. Is it in part the grain going diagonally?
Thanks!
The sharp edges are definitely not ultra-realistic but I found they look a lot better than softening all the normals. I challenged myself to use the minimum geometry on each piece to get the shape I needed. Otherwise, I would definitely have beveled the sharp edges.
The light wood definitely is not as high quality of a texture as the other ones, but I liked the color for the pieces. I put the grain diagonally deliberately, cause I saw it that way in the reference and I thought it looked good.
I have only one comment to say, you did a great job! I loved everything on the scene, and you have chosen the right way to do it! Thank you so much for sharing your work with us! 
Thanks for the kind words.
This is so cool! quick question (complete beginner here), how did you create and set the background? thanks! this looks really nice
I used an HDRI. Here’s a quick video about it: https://youtu.be/6VBkj_I-ONk
Blender Guru on youtube has even better tutorials, but I didn’t see a separate video from h about HDRI.
Great! Thank you so much!