Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24076018-20131108010229/@comment-24106129-20131108042413

On a broader sense it can be intrepreted to mean that a game determining force(s) have acquired several disposable but invaluable pieces to reach victory.

Remember that when the Beacon teams were decided each of them acquired a chess piece, RWBY taking the White Knights, JNPR taking the White Rooks. In the grand scheme of chess every piece (besides the queen) is a pawn to be tossed away for victory, perhaps all the teams are pawns. Remember that if a pawn advances to the eighth rank it will become a Queen, so perhaps one of the pawn teams became a queen? Or even a team of queens. It's easy to assume that RWBY is the Queen in this case since they are the main characters, are all female and have the strongest bonds between each other as a team, perhaps their strong (yet volatile) bonds represent their royalty. In any case the pawns could be any number of things holding high value but being disposable, the most common theory would be the allies they have gained over the course of season 1.