Hi all! I noticed this thread a few days ago when I was talking to a friend about WaT, and we both really enjoyed the towers bits. I didn't actually make it to the end of the thread (because it's quite long for me to read in a day), but I had a few ideas.
I think a board would be best, even for the down sides, you could even just grab a few extra cards as a measurement tool or something akin to that. 10x10 is best because vorinism, and it's a nice board size.
For drawing after rounds I think it would be interesting to draw until you have 10 cards in your hand, it would even the playing field until the last round where if you lost too many troops in earlier rounds you wouldn't have the full deck.
The orientation idea is fun and interesting but when it comes down to it, it would just get annoying to deal with I feel.
After looking at this thread I also decided to make some chip pieces with symbols on them for each card, and also a board. I designed the terrain pieces with the ability to put pieces in them (even if the terrain doesn't allow for that, I like consistency).
Honestly I'm just here for the ride of creating a fun board game based off a book I love, and hopefully official rules will be released eventually, but until then I'm excited to see this threads progress.
I attached all the .stl files for my 3d models, I will also be splitting the board in 4 eventually just to make the print easier.
High Ground.stl Mountain.stl Cavalry.stl Chasm.stl Infantry.stl Archer.stl Shard.stl Board.stl
Edit
I just remembered a few things I wanted to add right after posting. The wording in the google sheet is a little confusing on when a shardbearer can be killed, I was playing with my brother and we had no clue how to say when we could kill each others shards. And if we did do a board instead of an open table then for flanking and shardbearer killing, would the wall/border count as something, so could you just corner their shard or no?