As I stated previously, I was really hoping to avoid a game board consisting of individual quads. Doing so will add an additional level of complexity to the code as well as increasing the triangle and surface counts. (Note to self: I could possibly code this using just 1 or 2 surfaces.)
How big is your board exactly? Creating a quad per square, setting it's uv's and addmesh to the whole board entity isn't going to be a hardship surely?
Stevie