Ended up with a scale-ratio of 0.06 to take the pieces from the reference to the board which has 5cm squares. Linked the pieces from the pieces blender file, moved them to their own collection which I hid and then made linked duplicates for the final transforms. For the purposes of this scene I just arrayed the pawn. My board has a bit of width so the snap-to-face feature was a time-saver combined with setting the pieces’ origins to their bases.
