Fencer: It may be true that some things like accepting games could have problems with a complete clone but playing them would have no problem at all. If I am playing you I can get the game off the US server(It is cheaper there then Canada) and then submit it back to the US server. You can pick up the game some time in the next week off your local server.

Even board are not that time sensitive since you are not using a real time model like on my server. If someones post shows up 1 or 2 sec late we
can chock it up to just not refreshing at the right time to see that reply before responding.

Things that are really time sensitive like game accepting could be left all on one server so you don't have the update error problems

Just pictures is a workable start. Often I will have a board slow down because of pictures and I have a huge cach.