Try this: when shopping for your cheese board, don't think of it as cheese. Instead, think of it as an amalgamation of familiar flavors. Take Brie: in its youth, it tastes of sweet cream; it butters your palate. Instead of thinking, "What goes with Brie?" I invite you to think about what you might eat with something similar, say,  whipped cream : fresh & preserved berries, pies -- citrusy, chocolatey, or other crust-enveloped fruit -- or, to take a more savory route, what you'd enjoy with a slathering of  butter : fresh radishes, for example. Let these ideas guide you. No one expects you to bake a whole pie just to pair with a lil' piece of Brie, but you can connect the dots by choosing a sweet, biscuity cracker & topping it with something dessert-like: lemon curd or even a drizzle of fudge sauce. Riper Brie can take on flavors of wild mushrooms or roasted broccoli, so think about what you'd eat with those foods: roast beef? Try bresaola. Mashed potatoes?

Speaking from experience, ripe Brie is  magic on a potato chip. I, for one, enjoy herbaceous flavors with my fungi, so I might select rosemary crackers or a fennel-studded salami to go with a mushroomy Brie. Next time you're searching for potential pairings, consider what  other foods your cheese is reminiscent of, & pair based on that - don't get hung up on whether or not a particular condiment is "meant to" go with a particular cheese.

Okay, logistics: Unless you have a wire box cutter at home, you'll have a tricky time producing thin, identical slices of harder, drier cheeses. That's okay! You can buy one online. If, when you wedge your knife into a cheese, it splinters & crumbles, yield to its tendencies. Use the tip of your knife, sinking it into the cheese then prying it away, to liberate nuggets from a hunk. You can crumble the whole piece, or leave a glacier-like chunk of it as-is so that the crumbles appear to be cascading from it. This also applies to blue cheeses, which you can crumble easily with your fingers. If you're serving a small, whole wheel of something quite soft, don't force it apart into sticky pieces that will sink & settle into a gooey mess. Instead, halve the wheel laterally. This creates two bowl-like discs, making it easy for your guests to see the paste within & leaving them less afraid of the rind they aren't sure they can eat (hint: the answer is usually yes). When it comes to cheeses that  do slice well (ones that are semi-firm & smoother in texture), use a chef's knife to slice triangles from a wedge, or rectangular matchsticks from a slab. You can stack them, fan them out, or line them up; the repetition of the shape will create a pleasing pattern no matter how you arrange them...just avoid deli-style cheese cubes.