Board Game Designers Forum

Twenty years in the making, this chess for three game is ready for Chi-Tag 09.
Brief History:
I tried many ways to design this game; the 1st one included a double row of Pawns.
1st gameboard was painted. The pieces came from very cheap chess sets.

Design-wise, I knew the game had to play as close to chess as possible.
The 3 colors on the board had to be "quietly" different because of the optics produced by a field of hexagons.
Three colors also meant a 3rd bishop which would stand between the King and Queen. I found that unacceptable; so I put the Bishop on a Horse and named it the Champion. (from Camelot)

If it weren't for the Champion, I could have used pieces of the shelf for prototypes. Thus began a ten year trek of designing and molding pieces. Silicone slip molds were fine for a few prototypes but bubbles, color matching and damage to the molds were a constant problem. I had to go to a two piece mold.

The kind of mold that would solve all three problems turned into a spin casting mold, big enough for a full set of 19 pieces. So I made one. It took 4 years, many tests and learning spin tech. I'm using that mold today and am delighted with it's performance!

The game board itself was another adventure. The effect I wanted was that of graphics on mousepads. The process is dye sublimation. Hundreds of places could do mouse pads, but nobody was doing anything the size of my board.
The firm that finally took it on had their own learning curve. It took 18 months for 100 boards of which 15 were perfect. They reprinted the order with varied success.

Finally! Got pieces and boards. Graphics was and is a lot of fun. I thought most of the work above was fun. The patent was not fun. Two more followed and I have to say, the USPTO has less humor that the post office. But this time it was done without outside help.

The dynamics of this game were in my head pretty much from day one with only a few issues. Playing the game with friends as often as possible worked out the details. Putting it all together took a lot of time and expense. Nothing compares to the fun of a new idea. Getting it to the market...Well, that's another story.

Jeff Jones