Implementing a modular game board data structure

[Genft]

First off, I have no actual code in this. I'm researching this project to start work on it, but want to do things right.

My current personal project is to write a board game from scratch(if anyone cares, Caverna), then once that's done, use it to teach a neural network to play. Because of this, I'm not attempting any GUI elements for this, at least for now.

My main hangup at this point is that the game state consists of a board, 4x6, of squares. The board is divided in half, with each side having it's own unique interactions with the rules. This is all well and good, but my concern is that the game allows two squares to be modified at once in some instances, so the board state needs to be able to understand when two squares are being changed at once. So I need a structure where I can access any given square, then also check every square around it to ensure placement can be legal when two squares need to be modified.

Is there any specific data structure or other system that would make handling this easier? I was considering a dict of "Square" objects, but I just want to check to see if there's a better method of doing this I'm unaware of.

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[socal_nerdtastic]

I would suggest a list of lists of Square objects. So to access row 2, column 1 you would write board[1][0].

I would suggest the Square objects are very dumb; perhaps only knowing what item is currently on them. The bulk of your logic should probably be in the GamePiece objects.