Board Yet Recommends…

I want to take a moment to give a shoutout to my friend Bryan and his blog about the Filofax. It’s a personal planner and also a lifestyle. He is running a contest to win a personal planner and if you see this I recommend you check it out. It’s a good enough blog and contest that I would just as soon distill my chances of winning to drive traffic

Link to the contest

Print and Play

For the past few weeks all of my leisure time has been invested in planning and building a Print and Play copy of Dune! I have an original edition from 1979 but there’s something about it that makes me want to leave it in the box. For one I freak out about people folding the paper shields, putting the tokens in the combat circle, etc. Another thing is that it just doesn’t look great. It definitely looks like a 70’s era war game.

The new version I’m working on has modern artwork and I can customize the pieces to suit my tastes. In order to keep myself on task I relied on Evernote. I kept a few different notes in a Print and Play Project notebook to keep track of budget, decision points, and to keep pictures in an easy to find location.

I handled the project in a few phases to mark progress and break it into goals that would satisfy my “get it all done now” attitude.

Phase One: Troop Tokens
Phase Two: Leader Tokens
Phase Three: Board
Phase Four: Cards
Phase Five: The Rest

But enough about that, on to some pictures and details!

Phase One: Troop Tokens

The first and biggest decision I made was how to create the playing pieces in the game. There are 120 double sided troop tokens, 36 larger leader tokens, and a few assorted other tokens. This is the main way players interact with the game and the parts that will have the most impact on their experience. I chose to use wooden disks because of their tactile feel and weight. The original game had thin cardstock tokens in a solid color. They are lightweight and chintzy. This version won’t have this problem!

I bought a 100 pack of full page letter size label paper which was perfect to stick the decals on the disks. After printing them I used a spray acrylic sealant to keep the ink from running and to protect the paper when I sealed the disks with Mod Podge. Here is a full sheet of labels. I had two of these to punch.

And this is the product before being sealed with Mod Podge

I used a 3/4 inch circle punch from the scrapbooking aisle at Hobby Lobby to cut these. They are sized closer to 5/8 so some of the stickers are cut weird or wrong. If I had it to do over I may scale the print up a few percent to make it match my punch.

Phase Two: Leader Tokens

I didn’t actually take any pictures of these in progress. I’m not sure why. I have pictures of the finished result though.

The leader stickers printed out at 1 1/4 inch circles. I didn’t find a circle punch in that size and the disks I chose were exactly that size as well. This led to some awkwardness in the end result. I had to hand cut the 76 labels and then stick them perfectly on the disks. The result looks very tattered and poorly done. When I look back and decide to put more effort into the game I think this will be my first upgrade. If I could scale the stickers down to 1 inch and get a punch I think they would look great on the circles I already have.

I used the same finishing methods on these as I used on the troop tokens. Spray sealant on the labels and Mod Podge on the finished disks.

Phase Three: The Board

The board took me three attempts to get it right. Since I wanted the board to feel professional I bought a copy of Trivial Pursuit at a Goodwill to repurpose. As an aside I wonder if anyone has ever actually played any version of this game. Each Goodwill seemed to have at least three copies.

I got the file for the board from Ilya on Board Game Geek. It was one huge image so I used Poster Razor to slice it up evenly into 6 pieces. I think my biggest problem with this is I chose to use overlap. If I had it to do over (which I did!) I should have left that off and tried to line it up freehand.

So on my first board I used regular old copy paper for the image. I trimmed the pictures down with a guillotine cutter and pasted them to the board with a glue stick. It sounds pretty low tech but it worked moderately well. My main problem was that the board was 20x20 but the printout was 18x20. There was some overlap in the image and it didn’t exactly fit the board. We centered it and I applied the sealer and Mod Podge to strengthen the paper. If I hadn’t done this the image would have shredded the first time I folded the board.

So attempt two involved us peeling the original graphic off of the board to reveal the chipboard and placing the board off center. Then we slit the Dune map along the seams to make it fold without pressure on the paper. This turned out pretty okay. Thanks to the Mod Podge we were able to remove the map in one piece without ripping it. That stuff is a miracle in a bottle.

At this point I had a playable board and wanted something higher quality so back to Hobby Lobby, this time for Ultra Black Presentation Board. Well I didn’t go for that but ended up buying it. It’s thicker than chipboard and really sturdy. I printed the map again in six pieces on label paper. I again spray sealed the image to keep the ink from running. I used a rotary cutter to remove the boarder. This time I had no overlap and mounted the label directly to the board and cut the board to the exact size I needed. This fit together perfectly and I was very happy with the result. Again I put a few layers of Mod Podge on to protect it and I had a board in six pieces.

Since I’m never happy with anything I decided to buy some strapping tape and hinge the board. I hinged it in three pieces down the middle. One of the joints is off by 1/16th an inch. I haven’t decided if it bothers me enough to cut the hinges and deal with a puzzle board though. I’m going to invest in some shelf liner to keep the board from slipping apart and will decide from there.

Phase Four: Cards

Any good board game has cards. This is a good board game thus I had 126 cards to cut out. I printed them double sided on 110lb cardstock. The stock is thinner than poker card stock but it sufficient to work in the game.

Then I went to Office Depot and for 75 cents I had them cut the cards for me. The lady warned me the machine was a little off but I thought it was worth it if it worked. Unfortunately it was very off and most of my cards wouldn’t fit in the sleeves I bought to protect them. That meant I had to cut them down to fit and look even. I spent almost 5 hours with the rotary cutter and straight edge trimming down every single card. My back still hurts but the cards are even. Now the sleeves are too big and I can’t return them so I will have to deal with that.

If I were to upgrade the game my second upgrade would be to buy the cards custom printed from Artscow so they are heavier stock and fit my sleeves.

Phase Five: The Rest

I’ve lumped the decisions and construction of the rest of the game in one section. These were minor decisions and problems that required very little planning.

The game requires currency and I decided to reduce the pool from 4 denominations to 2. I am using glass drops from the floral department of Michaels for the money (aka spice).

The combat wheels are also straightforward. I printed them on card stock and used a brass fastener to make them spin.

Player shields are also on cardstock and cut out with the cutter. I decided against making them double sided so that you could read your powers or hand them over for questioning without showing your hidden information.

For storage I used Really Useful Boxes. I had some already but bought small ones for the six player pieces and used larger ones for the glass drop currency. These are awesome boxes.

The rules are printed on heavy copy paper and mounted in a presentation binder.

Here is a picture of the final project in motion. I got a four player game going briefly. After turn one a player was called away so we restarted and played with three. It went well. Expect a review sometime this week or next!

Conclusion

This was a big project and I couldn’t have done it without the help and support of my wife. She was there to help me through the frustration and to keep me from giving up. I would also recommend against using a local store for your parts unless you can get exactly what you need before you start. I was stuck without enough 1” circles to finish my troop tokens for a couple weeks because of inventory issues at Hobby Lobby. You can use Casey's Wood to bulk order your circles cheaper than buying local. They’re not rounded on the edges but they’re cheap and you can get them at one time.

I found a few areas for improvement that would have saved me about 20% off the final cost of the project. Ordering the disks in bulk and doing all the printing myself were the two main areas.

Overall this was a lot of fun and very rewarding. Now I just need five people willing to play a four hour game…

Leave it at the Door…

To me board gaming is all about relaxing and having fun. Let me rephrase that, board gaming should be about relaxing and having fun. I mean it’s a game right? I play games to escape, spend time with friends, and let your brain think about something other than life (unless I’m playing Life…). Saying that is is possible to ignore a bad week at the office, bad news from a friend, or someone else’s bad mood is like saying you can ignore the hungry bear following you as you hike. It’s not easy and could be harmful to your health.

My gaming life has started to stagnate recently. I wasn’t really enjoying it and I think that had at least moderate impact on my fellow gamers. The stresses of work were seeping into my games. It took me ruining my experience with a game that I was extremely excited about to realize I had a problem. In less then a minute my recent gaming experiences flashed before my eyes and I saw one constant. I wasn’t having fun because I put so much pressure on the games to create the fun for me. I so desperately wanted everyone to like the games as much as I was certain I would that I let any negative reaction turn into a huge, inappropriate outburst. One memorable incident resulted in me trading away a game after one play based on the reaction of my group despite me actually enjoying the game.

I’m not able to control other people and make them feel like I do about a game. I am able to control myself and not get into situations that are going to make me defensive. I know who will like Dune and who would get frustrated with Merchant of Venus, which is part of the solution. The other part is not letting hype get to me enough to allow a game be ruined if it isn’t everyone’s favorite. By doing this I can at least ensure that I have a good time at the table. After all it’s only a game, isn’t it?

Playing Favorites

First off hello and welcome to “Board Yet?”. I hope you find helpful and entertaining information here.

When I tell people that I play board games as a hobby the first question I get is “What is your favorite game?”, Well actually the first question is typically “Like Monopoly?” but then the conversation turns toward questions about my favorite games.The question is actually trickier than you would expect.

Of course I have a favorite game. That is without a doubt Merchant of Venus. This is a game where players are interstellar merchants who trade goods and transport passengers through a vast and dangerous galaxy. The game is a classic and definitely worth checking out with the upcoming reprint.

This is simple enough, right? Just say Merchant of Venus, smile smugly that I have a copy of a rare grail game, and watch the person who asked lose interest and walk away. That is definitely one way to work it. I would like to propose a different way to handle the situation.

First off it’s important to realize you have been given a great opportunity to introduce a new player to the world of designer board games. Everyone seems to have a fond memory of playing games with their parents on Saturday night or playing checkers with their grandpa. You can take this little spark and run with it by letting them know of a different game you really like that they may also share an interest in.

I’m not proposing you lie. If there is literally only one game you like then talk about it. I am just suggesting you making a mental list of games that are generally approachable to keep as your “favorites” list. As mentioned above I adore Merchant of Venus but when I was recently asked about my “favorite” game by a coworker I talked about Ticket to Ride. I knew she had a child that is into trains and the geography would appeal to her desire for something educational. It’s also not a fib since I do like the series quite a lot. I took the opportunity to receive a polite nod and instead had a 30 minute conversation that lead to a sale at my friendly local game store (FLGS).

If I’m given a choice I would play Merchant of Venus every weekend. That said if I can bring someone new into the hobby and get them excited about playing a game then I’ve got a Ticket to Ride.