No odd little tricks were used in making this pic.
the black lines are just cylinders and spheres unionized together and then clipped so that they look like plain black lines.
the stones are just shperes squashed on their y axis.
the board if I remember well is using the DMFWood4 or DMFWood5 texture.
And the ground is your standard White_Marble texture.
The whole scene is lit by one spotlight on the left and behind the camera

If you want to see more images just goto http://members.xoom.com/gregoirem to see most of my images.
If you want animation fun goto one of my more popular sites :)
http://www3.sympatico.ca/gfm