a pursuit of fruitless endeavors and endless refinements

Tag: printing

Playtesting Board Games

I had a little hiccup this week and found that my old blog theme was about seven years old and way out of support.  I was wanting to add a nifty plug-in but trying to get it to play nice crashed the site hard so I went shopping for a more recent theme and was glad to stumble onto the one before you.  I hope it’s not too jarring of a change but if anyone has any feedback, I’d love to hear it.

In addition to the new look for the new year, I also am excited to test out a new board game.  I’ve actually been testing games for big publishers for the last five years or so but I’m usually under a Non-Disclosure Agreement to not talk about the product even after it is released. However, the current game I’m testing has a unique “Disclosure Agreement” instead where the publisher is encouraging the testers to discuss their experiences openly.

Walking Dead Wednesday: revising my boards

When I first set out to create my initial boards, I decided to use some 8″x8″ tiles from Fat Dragon’s Capital City papercraft pdfs.  Looking through the campaign in Mantic‘s Days Gone Bye expansion for Walking Dead: All Out War, I noticed a few non-city themed play areas and the expansion came with a field-looking paper mat.  Since I don’t have any open field paper terrain, I will need to make something else. I would just use that paper mat but it’s all in color and will clash with my theme so I decided to scan the mats and reprint them in black and white.

Mustaches, version 2.0

I had a lot of fun making my first batch of Flick em Up! mustaches but I was not 100% happy with how they turned out as the process of cutting them from labels made the cut outs imprecise and limited what styles I could actually use.  I thought about using decals but the starter kits for those are around $20 and I wasn’t that unhappy with my results.

I shelved the concept until recently when a friend pointed me to this Instructable regarding Clear Stickers by user AndelDOA. This “hack” seemed really easy and very cheap.  Being this close to Christmas, almost everyone should have everything you need on hand: Packing tape, a spoon (or burnishing tool), bowl for water, scissors, and your print out on regular printer paper from a laser jet or xerox machine.  That last item is the key to the whole trick so if you don’t have access to a laser printer, you should be able to go to a local print store and get a print out for maybe a dollar.

Terrain Without Color

This week I worked a bit more on my Walking Dead terrain, specifically the game board.  As I discussed in my paper terrain post, I prefer terrain that is quick, usable, and easily stored.  Taking my Walking Dead game into the monochromatic world of black and white (b/w) makes printable paper terrain even easier. Also, painting a full game board in b/w seems too tedious for me. It can be done to great effect, however. Just check out this thread on coolminiornot.com and or this one on lead-adventures.de.

from user vikotnik on lead-adventures.de

from user vikotnik on lead-adventures.de

Showcase: Ventura

Ventura was one of those games that Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) brought over from its Italian publishing partner, Stratelibri, but never ended up taking off much in North America.  I found the game at Gen Con in 2011 when FFG was hyping up the release.  For whatever reason, our group actually enjoyed the theme and mechanics so I eventually picked it up.

image from Fantasay Flight Games

image from Fantasy Flight Games

Gen Con 2016 Prep: T-minus 3 days to departure

So Gen Con is less than a week away and I have quite a bit of stuff left to do.  This year, I decided to try my hand at running a few events.  Since I feel spiritually responsible for bringing Loopin’ Chewie into this world, I decided to run a fun little Loopin’ Chewie tournament.  The game might not be selling that hot as I was able to pick up quite a few copies for cheap at various big box stores. Regardless, maybe I can, in my small way, help bring some life into it again.

I have quite a few things I need to do to get these games up to snuff.  There is the mundane stickering that will need to be done but I also find the separated paddle arm to be too flimsy to really hold up to the punishment of tournament play.

Cabin Con 2016 Prep part 2

So this is the last weekend to get ready for our annual Cabin Con gaming and I’m still prepping material for some games.  I’ve been making progress on my components but I’m still pretty behind.  I’ll likely need to start scratching things off the list to make sure I can finish the most pressing projects in time.

First up are my Battle Buses from Dropzone Commander for use first in my Thunder Road Skull City variant.

battle bus

Printing Resources part 2

In part 1 of my review on print resources I discussed Artscow/Cowcow as a good general printing resource. This time I’m going to talk about a few alternative print options that I’ve used.

First up is Walmart Photo Center. It is really only useful for posters 20×30 or under.  I used this service once to make my Thunder Road boards:

WM poster

Printing Resources part 1

After searching for a good printer that will do a cheap 24×36 poster for a game board (jury is still out on if I made the best choice), I decided to cover the current printing options I use.

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