Many people have thought of 4-player versions of Western chess, and it's no surprise this has also happened for xiangqi. One of these 4-player xiangqi versions is fly-over xiangqi, and I thought it would be fun to make a board for that.
For pieces, I got two magnetic travel sets (you'll see soon why I needed the pieces to be magnetic). I left one set red and black, and painted the other set white and green.
For the board, the idea was to 'raise' the playing area of the board, and so emphasise the 'fly-over' aspect. So I got myself some plywood, a bag of nails, and some metal wire.
The nails were only hammered into the plywood a bit, and were to form the 'points' on which the pieces sit and move. See why I needed them to be magnetic?
The plywood was then painted black, which had the effect of making the tops of the nail almost appear to float above the board.
And then I used the wire to connect the nails, thereby creating the lines along which the pieces could move from their home part of the board to the other three parts.
The nails heads and wires were then painted yellow, whereas the nail heads and wires in the four palaces painted red, black, green and white, respectively.
So this is what the completed board looks like; the yellow-painted wire strengthens the illusion of the playing area 'floating'.
Final step, as always, is to add pieces to the board!
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