click here to see part 1 of this series.
click here to see part 2 of this series.
click here to see part 3 of this series.
Sunday was the last official day of Gen Con 2016 and I’m always a little lost on what to do. The Dealer Hall is a good option to find last minute deals or get in that last demo of a game you’ve been eyeing. This year, I was trying something a little different- I was running a few events.
click here to see part 1 of this series.
click here to see part 2 of this series.
My first event on Gen Con 2016’s Friday was a fun little Liar’s Dice Tournament. It was fun but I forgot how quick your luck can swing in those games and Reese and I failed the first round. Back to the dealer hall we went but then I had to ditch early to go find a run-through of Portal‘s new game Cry Havoc.
If you missed my part 1 post, you can see it here.
Gen Con 2016’s Thursday was coming to a close, or at least the dealer hall was as it was getting into the late afternoon. Fortunately for me, my day was finally getting into full gear. It was Blood Rage Tournament time! This was a series of two Blood Rage games and the top 4 total scores would play a final game for the tournament prize: a full Kickstarter Exclusives set. Pretty choice swag if I could get it.
One of the recent trends in game pimping is custom metal coins. Long a staple of LARPing (Live-Action Role Playing), allowing players to help immerse themselves more fully into their game world, custom metal coins have been pushing into the board game arena both as separate game accessories and standard components offered by the publisher themselves.
Recently, I received my Kickstarter pledge for Fantasy Coins, LLC second run of gaming coins and picked up some great custom coins for a couple of games in my collection.
One of the main reasons I wanted to start this blog was to show off my pimped games and talk about how I created them. After a while, I started thinking about why we pimp out our games and I found the question compelling enough that I’m starting a new blog series called, simply, “Why We Pimp.” In this series, I’ll focus on a narrow aspect of board game pimping and look at it from the philosophical perspective.
Of course, the biggest question is the general “why?” Why do it at all? Board game publishers spend countless hours designing beautiful games and yet we still want more. Manufacturing for board and table top games has never been higher and the trend now is actually over-producing the value in a game. Take Cool Mini or Not‘s (CMoN) fantasy sports game, Kaosball by Eric Lang. This is a relatively simple sports game with minis on a game board but CMoN decided really ramp up the production value by creating countless teams, each with their own minis and game bits.
One of the first things I ever did to pimp out a game was make tuck boxes for various game card decks. Sometimes tuck boxes are necessary for a game due to poor insert design or because you’ve expanded a game too much and had to ditch the insert all together. Other times, tuck boxes are a natural pimping addition to help explore more of the theme of the game while keeping things organized.
One thing that has fascinated me in board games is the concept of taking a standard game and blowing the whole thing out to a larger size. These “super-sized” or “Giant/Mega” versions of games are usually seen at game conventions or public spaces. I suspect this is mostly due to the cost involved in creating giant versions of the game and the space needed to play/store it but it also creates a spectacle and attracts a lot of attention.
It’s the spectacle that drives us to make giant versions of these games. It’s this unique aspect of play that engages the players and the audience in a way that takes something very familiar and maybe even boring and makes it into a memorable experience. For me, playing a giant version of the game brings me back to a child-like state where the pieces barely fit in my hands. My movements are awkward and clumsy and I become fully immersed in the game itself. It occupies a wide field of my vision and I am in the game as completely as I can ever be.
I was trying to figure out how best to carry my X-wing miniatures models as I started traveling to tournaments both locally and farther away like Indianapolis’ GenCon and Fantasy Flight’s Worlds competition held Minnesota. I randomly stopped at a garage sale (something I do maybe once every few years) and happened to find an old Star Wars action figure case for $3 (Power of the Force Millennium Falcon edition from Kenner produced around 1996). Once I saw it, I knew it would work perfect as a case for my X-wing minis.
So one of the main points of this blog is to not only talk about techniques to pimp your game and talk about what is going on in the industry but also show off my completed projects. I plan on making these “showcase” posts when I finish up a project but since I have a backlog of completed work already, for now I will be discussing some of my favorite games that started me on the this path.
Up first is one of my favorite remakes: Loopin’ Chewie.
I’ve heard about techniques to pimp out tokens but I have never tried it myself. I’ve heard once you go this route, it’s hard not to paint/tint all your tokens and that is not something I want to get too deep into.
When I pimp games, I usually don’t mess with the tokens as I’m busy messing with the other aspects of the game like miniatures, cards, tuck boxes, or cheat sheets. I have a couple of projects I’m working on right now that are actually full remakes of existing games and while I’ve done this before, this is the first time I’ve had to make tokens for a game remake.
Two games I’m working on right now required some tokens and since I’m remaking the game from scratch, I needed to find a way to make tokens quickly and easily. I didn’t really want to make the tokens from scratch but luckily, I have a metric ton of old tokens from the Star Wars: X-wing Miniatures game and I’ve found that they make a great base to sticker my own token images on top of.
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