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Making a really good set of pieces will have to wait until good relative
proportions for the piece values have been determined. Figuring out those
proportions is a job for a prototype, or series of protoypes.
A good prototype medium would be card. I am thinking a good construction
option would be to take a piece of blue paper, and a piece of white paper, and
paste these on either side of a piece of firm card stock. The adhesive must be
applied evenly and completely so that the paper will stick to the underlying
card wherever it might be cut.
The pieces are then laid out using a similar format to the board, and will
be marked up with the proper values prior to cutting. This will result in
triangular pieces. You could also have square or hexagonal pieces - indeed,
hexagonal pieces may be prefereble, but I'm going to stick with triangular for
now because they are easier to lay out and make since it would be all straight
cuts.
Rather than pasting paper onto the card, another approach would be to use
card with a fine finish on both sides then paint it in the proper colours,
although laying out the pieces directly onto the finished surface would be
harder than attaching a printed sheet of paper.
My thinking is that there should be a different set of pieces for each
prototype version, and that these pieces would be marked with a colour code.
The protoype proportions are as follows:
red - only 1 leremoc for each colour, on the other side
of a ferrorn; 6 thurin for each colour, five of which are backed by
ferrorn and the remaining one has a thurin on the other side.
This piece layout should be used for both sides of a hexagonal
cutout, although one side should be coloured blue.
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green - 3 leremoc for each colour, one each backed by a
ferrorn, thurin and leremoc; 18 thurin for each colour, one backed by
a leremoc, five backed by thurin and the remainder have ferrorn on the
other side.
This piece layout should be used for both sides of a hexagonal
cutout, although one side should be coloured blue.
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blue - 6 leremoc for each colour, one on the other side
of a leremoc, two backed by thurin, and the remaining three by
ferrorn; 36 thurin for each colour, two of which are backed by
leremoc, ten backed by thurin, and the remainder have ferrorn on the
other side.
This piece layout should be used for both sides of a hexagonal
cutout, although one side should be coloured blue.
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Here is an initial implementation of the above prototype piece sets,
created by printing each of these images out then laminating them together
with two sheets of thin card and then colouring in one side blue. Care had to
be taken that the glue covered every part of the surface. This is from before
the pieces have been cut up, of course.
In this picture, the red and green prototypes are showing their blue side,
while the blue prototype is showing its white side. The blue is much clearer
in person!
26-Jun-2004 - the above prototypes did not work well. The glue I
used was too brittle once dry, and the pieces themselves were too small. I've
realised these prototype pieces by scaling the images up by 50%, colouring the
whites blue, and then only printing one side of some mid-weight card (240g
weight). The backs were marked up with corresponding symbols by hand, then
were cut out. These pieces are not as durable as the laminated pieces would
have been, but there has been none of the separation of layers either which
has meant I have spent zero time sticking piece faces back on.
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