Greetings from the humble twtmc! I am the organizer of the cosplay chess event at Sakuracon and Anime Evolution!
SWEEET!!
I cant wait!!
what did they use for the floor squares at Sak Kon
I believe the person in charge sewed the board by hand. So a cloth board, though it looked pretty good.
Yea, it did but it got bunched up alot and we had to straighten it out after every game.
Actually, I think itd be easier for the audience to see the entire game if they were elevated and the players were bellow them.
What seemed to make the game more fun was the players just trying to have battles and skip the strategy.
Yea..that wasnt intentional it just kinda ended up that way. ^^;
The board was sewed fabric, but mighty expensive. If I can make it to Kumoricon, I will bring it (don't count on it, but I will try). I do not suggest this route right away, as it is fairly expensive ($140 for fabric) and takes about 15-20 hours to construct. The easiest way to go is buy about 700' of tape (masking tape ran me about $15 when I did this) and lay the board out on the ground just using a tape measure and putting an X where the black squares should be. Problems that may arise though is if you can't use tape, such as what happened at SC. Metrocon uses these foam pad things that fit together like puzzle pieces, but when I looked into buying them they were $6 a sq. ft. (to give you a perspective, a board is ~ 576 sq. ft.). The fabric wouldn't get bunched up as bad if it were held down with duct tape, but the Washington State Convention Center would only let us use Gaffer's tape (some kind of rare stage tape thats quite expensive).
As for elevation, it would be awsome if they audience was elevated. If this is not possible, have the board on the floor. Having it on the stage should be a last resort, as it just makes it hard to see. If there is a stage, put the table with the people playing chess on it, along with any hosts you might have.
For strategy; if the players use strategy, the game will go on longer (the one game we had like this went for 45 minutes, which was a great time frame). If they aren't using strategy and just going for battles, it will last about 10-20 minutes (a bit short if you have an hour). If you are doing the latter, make sure you have lots of battles planed out in advance that are fairly lengthy and entertaining.
Finally, make sure to have a meeting with everyone involved before the game. This makes sure that they are there and know what to do. It also gives you some set up time.
