So, I have been developing a board game that is both a word game and a strategy game. Without revealing the full extent of the game, I have a question regarding a method of actually building the board itself. I guess I have to explain how the premise of the game works in order for you to understand why i want do it like this(and to ask the question).
Players make words in which become the board itself. Meaning the units that a player controls can ONLY move on letter/faction tiles, regardless of what spaces are available on the board diagram. One of the core mechanics of the game requires the player to make a "zone" which is simply sealing off an area with the words as the border. could be a box or a weirdly shaped polygon. My current solution is to take solid colored tiles(faction tiles) that are the same size of the letter tiles and fill in the hole in the middle of the zone with these tiles. This, as you can imagine, is very time consuming. So I would like to make an entire board out of blocks that have essentially a piston that can go up and down, like the end of a pen that clicks when you press down, locks, then pressing further releases it. I want every space to have this.
My question is, is there something out there like this that is made in this form(and what is it called?), because I really don't want to buy like 400 pens just to chop off the ends to achieve the desired effect.
The reason is this. I want to do this so I can use whiteboard markers instead of colored tiles as a way of speeding the process up, so the player can just mark with the marker on the raised platform so that the marked spaces and the tiles are on the same level. Sure, I could probably do this a lot cheaper by just buying a whiteboard and marking the spaces with black tape, but then the letter tiles would be higher up and harder to tell where the zones are and where spaces a player can't go are(because spaces that arent colored tiles or letter tiles are places players cannot move units to).
Also, if anyone has a suggestion or better idea, I'm open to that too.
Players make words in which become the board itself. Meaning the units that a player controls can ONLY move on letter/faction tiles, regardless of what spaces are available on the board diagram. One of the core mechanics of the game requires the player to make a "zone" which is simply sealing off an area with the words as the border. could be a box or a weirdly shaped polygon. My current solution is to take solid colored tiles(faction tiles) that are the same size of the letter tiles and fill in the hole in the middle of the zone with these tiles. This, as you can imagine, is very time consuming. So I would like to make an entire board out of blocks that have essentially a piston that can go up and down, like the end of a pen that clicks when you press down, locks, then pressing further releases it. I want every space to have this.
My question is, is there something out there like this that is made in this form(and what is it called?), because I really don't want to buy like 400 pens just to chop off the ends to achieve the desired effect.
The reason is this. I want to do this so I can use whiteboard markers instead of colored tiles as a way of speeding the process up, so the player can just mark with the marker on the raised platform so that the marked spaces and the tiles are on the same level. Sure, I could probably do this a lot cheaper by just buying a whiteboard and marking the spaces with black tape, but then the letter tiles would be higher up and harder to tell where the zones are and where spaces a player can't go are(because spaces that arent colored tiles or letter tiles are places players cannot move units to).
Also, if anyone has a suggestion or better idea, I'm open to that too.
