In developing games one of the biggest hurdles to jump is "does your game make the player want to play or will they just get frustrated.". I've had great ideas that are impossible to bring to table top because there is either too much information, to many rules, or the components and overall "feel" is degenerated by the fiddliness.
One of my games is a TCG that plays similar to Summoner Wars where you are moving cards on the board. I wanted to have my game almost as portable as Magic the Gathering but with a grid-like style where you are moving cards on the field to tactical positions.
The problem with this is the fact that cards can go on top of each other and other cards can "attach" themselves to others (much like enchantments -aura). This is annoying because you are constantly picking cards up and putting them down. Now granted you are not always putting cards on top of each other but its a well noticed mechanic.
To solve this I though about creating terrain tiles elevating each space allowing for an easier retrieval. Of course this option sacrifices some of the games portability.
Thoughts?
The grid right now is five by (possibly) six. This is already pretty big. The attachments in this game will be positioned on the card horizontally with the name sticking out so the players know the name. This is fiddly unfortunately when moving cards around...
For Beggarking... I was taking into account that the main problem is get the card off the table. In many games to get a card off the table you have to either pick at the edges to lift it up (tedious) or slide it off the table (not as tedious but needs a considerable amount of room - which this game does not have with other cards being positioned on the field.
So I thought having each space elevated would allow players to "slide" the card off of the tile and move it with ease.