To start editing your board design, click on the name of the board in the Board Design list and the board designer should load up.
The settings tab holds some basic settings for the board - minimum / maximum players, Fill vs Circle mode (see Getting Started for more on this) and the Board Description. Once you have set these details the first thing you should do is use the Upload button to upload your board image to the site.
This is where the magic happens and you'll spend most of your time. The interface is ordered logically into the following sequence of activities by the Combo box on the left.
First, you need to define each of the Territories that make up your board. If your board is based off a map then this usually represents each of the countries or cities in your map. Click on the board image to place the territory and give it a unique name. You can set the maximum units that this territory is permitted to hold when you do this or leave it at the default 'Unlimited'. Note you can set a board level territory limit in the Rules section also. If you make a mistake or wish to move or rename your territory then use the Edit button to re-position or rename it.
The Select All and Select Multiple button can be used when attempting to move All or Multiple territories at once or setting All or Multiple territories to a specific maximum units.
If your map is set to Fill Mode, be sure and utilize the the Fill All toggle to test what your territories will look like once player owned.
Once you have defined each of the Territories select the Borders option to define the connections or 'Borders' between each of the territories. You'll need to ensure that each territory has at least one border connecting it to the rest of the territories else the game will be unplayable. Borders can be One-way or Two-way - to define a One-way border, first select the territory the border will go from and then the territory it will go to and choose 'One-way' from the drop down menu. The border will then be traversable only in this direction. In addition, the following custom border types are available in addition to the Default type:
The continents determine the unit bonuses given to players at the start of their turn for occupying specific territories on the board. For example, on the Global Warfare board the continent bonus is +2 units for occupying all the territories in Australasia. Continent bonuses can be positive or negative and can overlap (i.e. a single territory can be part of more than one bonus). The Designer shows territories that are already part of a continent bonus in blue for easier reference.
Border modifiers are an optional advanced gameplay feature that can be used to make it more or less likely that an attack over a particular border is successful. This is achieved in practice by the designer adding to or subtracting from the number of sides of the dice that the attacker or defender rolls. For example the default number of sides on the dice is 6 for both the attacker and defender. If the designer adds a border modifier, he could set it so that the attacker rolls with 10-sided dice while the defender rolls with the default 6-sided dice. This makes it more likely that the attacker will beat the defender on each die roll and hence more likely they will defeat the defending units. This could be used to simulate for example an artillery position attacking enemy units as you would expect artillery to enjoy an advantage against enemy troops.
To set a border modifier, first click on the territory in which you would like to define the border modifier from and then the territory the modifier applies to. Note that a border must already exist in this direction. Set the Attack Modifier to a positive number to improve the chances of a successful attack and decrease it for a less successful attack and similarly for the Defend Modifier. Note that border modifiers only apply in one direction so if you would like to set a border modifier in the opposite attack direction then select the territories in the opposite order and repeat.
The Setup option can be used by the designer to set up the board in a pre-determined way at the start of the game. For Setup to be honored in a game the Rule "Initial Setup" must be set to "Setup based". In the Scenario view you can click on any of the territories on the board and set whether you would like them to be initially one of the following options:
Note that if you create a game board with 6 player seats in the Setup but a game is started with only 4 players (if you chose to set the min/max players like this) then each player will be allocated a random seat at the start of the game and the rest of the player seat positions will become neutrals.
Note also that the player colors aren't relevant to the colors that the players choose when they start the game, i.e. players get assigned to a random seat position at the start of the game irrespective of which color they choose.
This part is pretty straightforward - you can upload custom card images that match the theme of your board or retain the default images. You can also set the names of the cards (except the wild card which is always 'Wild'). Try and make all your cards the same size so they tile nicely on the screen.
These are all covered on the separate Rules page.