Preferred wood for making game pieces

[Jay Jeffery]

So I'm planning to make some custom board games to share with family members.

For the game board, I'm planning to print onto 13"x19" photo paper and bond it to some thin plywood.

The game pieces (and I need to make a LOT of them) have me a little intimidated. I was thinking of making by routing a car-like profile into a bunch of strips and then crosscutting into pieces. This will probably be safest on some kind of crosscut sled; I love my fingers too much to do this on my 12" sliding miter saw.

This will make the game pieces all cross grain and in the weakest orientation. Is this likely to be a problem? I have a bunch of red oak, maple, walnut, and pine. Is there a wood that I should consider using that will give me better cross-grain properties?

Anyone here made a board game that learned some lesson they would like to share?

Any tips on painting small, light pieces of wood would also help.

In case anyone is curious, I'm making a Dallas-Ft Worth game board based off of the Ticket to Ride game. this city is pretty confusing and I want to teach them some local geography.

[Jim Becker]

A lot of the commercially made wooden game pieces I've seen over my lifetime were clearly made of maple. The close grain and hardness made for sturdiness.