Would this be something a home 3D printer could do? I'm not a maker but I could see the value of others being able to quickly build a universe of playing pieces if that was possible.
Board is MUCH more interesting to me if I can easily program it for my own games, especially if I can share them with others. I'm thinking about TTRPGs and other army building games where each piece has unique capabilities and rules.
It would be nice if I could buy smart bases, kind of like RFID stickers. Something I can glue to the base of an existing miniature with a 10-20mm round/square/hex base.
With those tools, I would build deep accounting assistance for complex games. If it's cheap, you could put custom terrain pieces on the Board with smart properties (hard cover, soft cover, blocks line of sight, etc).
Obviously there are lots of partnership opportunities there. You could get the table top game publishers to publish Board editions of their games that automatically keep up to date with the latest rules.
If that all works, the obvious next limitation would be board size. a 24" screen can do a lot, but many games would benefit from a screen measured in feet. That would be expensive and hard to move around though, given the current thickness.
Perhaps an intermediate solution would be support for tiling Boards. Everyone brings their own, you shove them together and have a much larger playing surface. Bezel width would be annoying here.
It is not a requirement to provide a conductive path to the person though. The patterns (glyphs as we call them) are detected and tracked regardless of whether they are being touched. However, when there is a conductive path to the person, the system detects that which provides another input vector.
3D print your goblin army, snap it to the base, touch the sword arm to attack, the shield arm to defend, etc. light up the base via capacitive to 0/1/2 inputs and you're set!