Slide cards under "board"

Module Design
1

Hello,

for my french version of root, I stumble upon a problem (I begin in module design). I want to be able to slide cards under a kind of board and then, if I add new cards, to slide it under the preceding one…
I have put an example as attachment (I hope)
Top left : I slide a first card
Top middle, I slide a second card under the first
Bottom left : The result
Bottom middle : skeleton of possible locations (blue and black are Decks, red is a Location for a Piece (can I do that)?
Right : zoom on cards one below the other

What I have managed to do so far is to use 2 Decks, one “below” the other. I can add cards to either deck and the “first” card will hide the second. But this design is not compatible with my “board” being an actual VASSAL Board.

So, now for the questions.

  1. does it seem logical to say that my “Board” is in fact a VASSAL Piece that will be static (and ABOVE the Deck)? (Then how do I do that, the static part ?)

  2. Can I impose a position for a Piece ?

  3. do you see a better solution to my problem ?

  4. side question : is it possible to say that a Deck can only accept ONE card ?

Thanks a lot,
Snow

2

Here is the first thing I’d probably try:

  1. Make a “piece” that duplicates the graphics for your game board, or at least enough of the edge to slide the cards under. If your board is very big you’ll probably need to split this into several pieces that you then manually place side-by-side in the right place aligned over your board, using At-Start Stacks.
  2. Use “Game Piece Layers” on your map to set the slide-under card decks to the very bottom, with the “special gameboard masking pieces” from Step 1 as the next layer up, and then other layers above that as appropriate.

I haven’t personally tried it but I think that ought to work for getting your decks appear underneath the board.

Meanwhile I don’t think a Deck can be told it’s only allowed to have one card. You could have have it respond to a “Moved” trigger issued by the map to check if it has just been moved to a location (Deck, whatever) that’s “already officially full” and in that case force it to “bounce back” to some pre-determined location and/or do a Report that says the space is full.

3

You can limit the ability of people to add cards to a deck manually using Drag’n’drop ('Restrict adding counters by Drag ‘n Drop?’ option, expression {DeckName_numPieces==0}), but this will not prevent cards being added by activated traits such as ‘Return to Deck’ . If you include these options in you cards, you would need to protect them with a Trigger Action that checks the number of pieces already in the Deck before triggering the Return to Deck.

4

Thank you for these suggestions. I’ll play around a bit with Vassal’s modules and come again with, I’m sure, some new questions.
Snow