Mouse & Elephant

Do it yourself!

It shouldn't take you too long to knock up a basic but workable prototype like this:

The board is easily drawn on coloured cardboard or even paper (may I suggest that the colour be less "pronounced" than the butt-ugly green I chose; a more discrete colour, like the greyish-brown in the De Luxe Edition you saw in the rules and strategy pages, is preferable because it doesn't steal visual protagonism from the pieces themselves).

As for the pieces, your first step should be this little download (96 KB). It'll give you the graphics of one complete set of pieces plus the other three queens.
A little tinkering with your favourite graphics programme, and soon you'll have the four sets with the background colours of your choice.
Now load the images in your word processor, place them all on one or two pages, sizing them according to the diameter you have chosen (mine is 28 mm, with a square size of 33 mm), and print them on the thickest cardboard your printer can handle.
By the way, playing with flat cardboard counters is not unpractical at all, since the pieces - until they're captured - never have to be lifted off the board (remember that they cannot jump over other pieces) and you can slide them around comfortably.

If you decide that you like the game and want to invest in something a little (a lot, really!) more fancy, go for the De Luxe Edition:
The board is basically the same, only bigger (mine has a square size of 50 mm). It also looks cool to use a silver or golden felt-tip pen. I drew the lines with pencil and ruler, and then again manually with a golden felt-tip pen, because I like the resulting look of "imprecise precision".
As the basis for the pieces I used -  wait for it! - milk bottlecaps of all things, and I can tell you I never looked back!

You could also press wooden checkers into service, such as are sold separately in good toy shops, or order wooden disks from your local carpenter.
If you live in Germany, you can get such material by postal order,
 

but to tell you the truth, it tends to be a bit on the expensive side. Which brings us back to those bottlecaps...
Unless you buy wooden disks that are already coloured, you will have to paint them yourself. I used special enamel paint for model painting, and it worked fine.
One last point: I'd advise you to protect the cardboard pieces, before you cut them out and paste them on top of your checkers (or whatever), with adhesive plastic, in order to protect their good looks. If the cardboard you used is a bit on the flimsy side, it could even be advisable to put adhesive plastic on both sides, lest the glue below should gradually work its way through it and eventually rear its ugly head on the surface, ruining the pictures...

I wish you good luck with the handiwork, and many enjoyable games of M&E!
 

M&E rules                                          Some basic strategy

Any questions or comments? Mail me!

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Grateful Acknowledgement:
All animal graphics for M&E come from Grolier's excellent Multimedia Encyclopaedia (1996 edition).