Hello, I'm new to board gaming but not game design

It will be interesting to see how and if your experiences in video game design affect your board games.

Hello there, good to see another video game dev here. I was a programmer in the industry a while back, now I make board games.

My advice on prototyping is to do whatever is fastest and most efficient for you. You and I both know the amount of time and effort that goes into a "Simple" computer version and that's why I rarely do them.

My own method is to make prototype out of index cards and paper. This is an excellent method because you can modify the game WHILE PLAYING. During a playtest yesterday I realize the balance was off... so I immediately added a new "Rule". I didn't need to update code or clear the board... I simply tested the fix. In one game, I updated the rules about 12 times.
Between coding time and compile time... I don't miss my old methods. By the end of ONE game, it was actually fun and reasonably balanced.

But because most of my friends are out of state (Game devs don't live in maine)... I NEED a computerized prototype. But, to save time, I don't write software for it. I spend 15 minutes building a "ZunTzu" module which allows me to play the game online with others.
No AI and no fancy rulesets. It's simply an interface that lets me move pieces, roll dice, and draw cards.

While AI could help you test it, it'll be far less effective than human beings. The AI is limited to your own thoughts and plans, but is a terrible judge of "Fun". Other players will see the game in a very differently and they will update their play styles based on their own methods of thinking.

The ONLY time I go through the trouble of writing software is when I need to test something a MASSIVE number of times such as "How will the results of this awkward die roll be after 20,000 rolls." Even here though, I focus on simple text based windows that take me an hour or two to write.

We both know how much time is wasted in video game development. Everything from waiting on assets to rewriting MASSIVE parts of the game that "How could we have known it wouldn't be fun"... my advice is to avoid making those mistakes. Seriously... if your prototype takes you seven months before you realize the core gameplay isn't fun... something is wrong with your methods.

Learn to focus on rapid and efficiently development methods. Rather than building your full game... test each major aspect of the game individually and combine them a bit at a time.
My upcoming published was based on a 24 hour prototype. The entire development time was a relaxed month or two. Obviously, the publisher put in far more development over the past 5 months... but the core was good enough to sell very quickly.
Another project that's gained quick some interest from publishers was LITERALLY made in about 4 hours and balanced over the next couple days.
OF course I have some other projects that have been in development for months, but the reality is that I wasted very little time with them. When a game was broken and I couldn't find a fix... I work on something else so that I could look at the project with fresh eyes in a week. Unless I'm under contract with a publisher... there is no rush. Why waste effort spinning my wheels? (Just be sure to actually come back to the original project)
Efficiency is a beautiful thing.

Overall, as I game developer I'm finding board game design rather simple. I don't need to worry about animations, graphics, sound, dialog, save systems etc. I can focus on the player experience and nothing else.

The only real trick is learning to focus on the core game play instead of the aesthetics that make up modern video games. There are plenty of mistakes that game devs (Board and Video Game) make that cost them time. The better you learn to avoid the distractions of "I need to work on the backstory" and "I need to make these prototype cards pretty"... the faster you'll find the real gem in your work. Polish that gem and it won't be long until you have something beautiful.