Christmas Board Games (Part 2)

Its taken some time but I've finally been able to try out a few more games that showed up for Christmas.

Coup

Coup is designed to be a short, simple game of bluffing and conspiracy.  Each player has two hidden characters with special abilities and using these abilities, attempts to remove the characters the other player's control. And, since nobody knows who your characters are, you can bluff and act as if you are any character at any time. Of course, if you get caught, things won't work out so well. At no point in the game will you every know which character's the other player's hold and every play is a gamble.  They call this kind of game a "social deduction" game as it is somewhat possible to infer who might be what character based on how they (and everybody else) is playing.

The games tend to go quickly and I enjoyed them, even though I lost most of the time. And you can't beat the feeling of lying through your teeth and getting away with it.  The worst part of the game is that players are eliminated one at a time; if you're the first to lose in a six-player game, you'll have a bit of sitting to do.  Not too long, though, as the games are over in about 15 minutes, usually.

Space Cadets Dice Duel

Space Cadets Dice Duel is a follow-on game to the original Space Cadets, a cooperative game.  In that game, each player has a role on the ship and to contribute to the success of the mission, he/she must complete his/her own mini-game.  Space Cadets Dice Duel is similar in that each player has their own role but rather than a mini-game each rolls a special set of dice and rather than all working on one team cooperatively, two teams play against each other.

There are lots of dice and lots of rolling.  There are no turns per-se and the only cost to an unfavorable roll is that the dice end up being rolled again. Each team ends up with multiple players rolling their dice simultaneously in an attempt to position their ship into advantageous firing positions or avoiding and preventing their opponent from doing the same.  The game is almost literally non-stop; when our pilot took a break mid-game to grab a snack, we were sitting ducks just hoping the other team wouldn't be able to get their act together.

I was attracted to this game because it seemed like it might be simple enough for many non-board-gamers to understand and exciting enough for them to enjoy.  I haven't been able to really test it in such a scenario but I will say my more strategic and nerdy board game group did enjoy it.  We picked it up quickly and the we were able to play three games in about 90 minutes.  Its more of a tactical game than strategic but we got good enough in a short amount of time that we got past the dice-rolling random-ness and were trying to execute specific movements and attacks.  I suspect it will make a repeat appearance at game night.

Christmas Board Games

This Christmas was a board game Christmas.  Virtually all of my gifts were board games and at this point, I have more than enough to keep me busy through the rest of the year. Perhaps even longer.

I've had a chance to play a few of them (though not all) and it is an interesting mix.

Race for the Galaxy

I think of this game as Puerto Rico set in space; a lot of the mechanics are similar.  Each player chooses an action that all players will execute but he/she gets a bonus for choosing it.  There are goods that have to be produced which can be turned into victory point or turned into money. Developments can be built that enable a variety of advantages such as greater yields during production or lower cost of expansion.

There are key differences, though, which makes the game far from a re-themed Puerto Rico. Most importantly, the game is a card game which makes it both simpler to manage (fewer bits all over the place) and more complex as the costs and advantages of each card are much more variable.  It kind of feels like a hybrid of a deck-building game where each card adds unique abilities and a role-picking/resource development game like Puerto Rico.

There are other differences which I find as advantages over Puerto Rico.  The game can be played with only two players with no compromises or alternative rule sets.  Once you've got your handle around the iconography, the game plays very quickly, less than 30 minutes for a two player games.  Though I've only played a few games, the possible strategies seem quite varied and of course, with any card game, there are a number of expansions to increase the variety.

Battlestar Galactica

Though I didn't get this game for Christmas, it has gotten a lot of play time among me and my friends lately. The first two times we played we used a modified rule set to try to get our handle around the rules.  The third time, a few weeks ago, we played using the full rules and the experience was great. At least I think so, as I was the sole Cylon traitor and despite making a few crucial errors, was able to destroy humanity right as they were about to reach safety.

I feel the game does a great job of capturing the desperation and paranoia of the the television show and I expect it will become a favorite among my friends.  Clearly, though, it is a tough game to learn.  It took all of us six or seven hours of gameplay to feel like we had a handle on it.  The first night we played, we had a string of bad card draws that made the game seem impossible to win and on the second occasion, this time playing without traitors to give ourselves a change, it seemed too easy.  It is due up for another play in the next few weeks and we'll see how that game turns out.

Dixit

If you've played Apple to Apples, then you understand the basic play of this game.  For Dixit, though, the play revolves around cards with fantastical images rather than phrases or titles.  On a player's turn, he/she picks a card, gives a clue and all the other players contribute cards that they think best match the clue.  Points are awarded if the players guess the clue-giver's card and the non-clue-giver's get additional points if people guess his/her card is the clue-giver's.

The artwork on the cards is evocative and I think the game can really thrive when playing in larger groups with people who are capable of giving obscure and oblique clues.  The game is quick to learn and removes some of the arbitrariness and silliness that Apples to Apples can bring.  (Not there is anything wrong with those; sometimes that's what everybody wants).  I think of Dixit as the artistic, creative, and imaginative party game.

Making a Custom Board for "Power Grid"

I am thankful that I am not the only one out there that likes to modify, improve, and customize my board games. It was my exploration on the web that lead me to build a storage box for my Dominion cards, a similar effort for my copy of Carcassonne, and my latest board-game project: making custom boards for Power Grid.  The game board for Power Grid is a map of country or region with key cities connected by transmission lines.  All these maps are two-sided and the board that comes stock with the game has the US on one side and Germany on the other. There are many expansions you can buy that provide maps for places like Japan, China, and Northern Europe (to name a few).

Those with a more creative drive make their own maps and many have posted the image files for these maps online, freely sharing their work with others.  The quality of the work varies greatly with some appearing nearly as good as those professionally made and other with quality more in line with my own drawing and sketching abilities.  Two circumstances lead me to try to assemble my own custom board using some of the higher quality files I have found.

Circumstance one: a friend of mine had come upon a large-format color printer and needed some material to use for test printing.  He knew I had some larger Power Grid map files and suggested he try a couple of them.

Circumstance two: I was ordering some photo albums for my customary photographic year-in-review and noticed the same vendor offered a product they called "chipboard" which looked suspiciously like the material used to make game boards. I measured one of my existing Power Grid boards and discovered the smaller but thicker version they sold was very close to the correct dimensions.  It was 1/4" too short in one dimension and about 25% thicker but neither one of these was a deal breaker; I was convinced I could make it work.

My friend delivered the prints a few weeks ago and the blank chipboard showed up a week later.  With a little bit of spare time late this past week, I decided to try to put the pieces together and see how it looked.

The first job in making the board was trimming and scoring the board to the correct size.  The board has a quad-fold design which is easier to show than explain:

To make the cuts and scores I used a utility knife with a new blade along with an aluminum straight-edge as a guide.  Both cutting and scoring required three to eight passes but the results turned out great.  I ended-up reinforcing the hinge points on the board with book tape.  I suspect this is not actually necessary but its an easy precaution to take.

Scored and cut game board.

Book tape used to reinforce the hinges.

To mount the prints, I trimmed the margins off of each print and confirmed they would fit on the board.  First problem: the prints were not quite the correct size for the board with both being slightly smaller than desired; additionally, they were not the same size.  In the spirit of making a prototype, I decided to use the prints as is, re-trimming the chipboard to the size of the larger of the two prints.

Once these adjustments were made, I used spray adhesive to carefully attach the prints to the chipboard, one on the front and the other on the back. The alignment of the print to the board was not perfect but it was good enough and probably as good as I could do on my own.  Before the glue had fully set, I used a utility knife with a new, fresh, blade to carefully cut the mounted images along outer-opening fold-lines. (That is, fold-lines that expose the chipboard when folded.)

The final step was applying a protective coating of some kind to keep the surface from being easily damaged during game play.  Upon advice of the internet, I used a polyurethane spray wood finish, applying two or three light coats to each side.  The can says that the finish will "amber" lighter colored objects but most of the board is more darkly colored and thus not worth worrying about.

The final product:

For a prototype, I happy with how things looks. I haven't played on it yet so I'm not sure how it will hold up over time.  The varnish may or may not be thick enough.  The exposed edges of the board may be a problem and fray with use.  (The professional boards fold the image over the edge and attach is underneath the image on the reverse side.) Like I said, though, its a good first try.

Proof Checking at Fedex Office

As part of keeping my Dominion box organized, I print off dividers that a wonderful soul has freely published onto cardstock via FedEx Office nee Kinkos.  The divider's I hadn't printed were for the latest release (Guilds) and so while having other fun Christmas-y stuff printed, I had these done as well.
The results are shown below.

Compare the above to the original file shown below:

Two problems here:

1. Clearly the file didn't print properly.  Where the name of the card should be in the title banner a black box exists.  No PDF viewer, including the online proofer provided by FedEx office shows this black box so I don't know how it ended up getting printed but it did.
2. Here is the full text of the pink note attached to the printed document.
   
   "PRODUCTION REVIEW SAMPLE
   Dear customer,
   I have compared the proof (if applicable), originals and the job ticket, and determined that it meets the FedEx Office standards of quality.
   All subsequent copies were produced to match this sample.
   We appreciate your business and look forward to meeting your needs in the future.
   (Team Member Signature)"
   
   Knowing that sometimes things get messed up, FedEx Office has a system in place where each print job is examined to ensure that it is getting printed properly and has an employee sign this verification. As the note clearly states, this includes comparing the printed product to the original. I know from trouble-shooting the problem with them after the fact that no digital representation of this file showed the problem, only the printed version.  They had a clear definition of the final product to use in comparing to the printer output and yet kind of blew it.

In my mind, the second problem is bigger than the first. 

College Group Board Games

I was recently commissioned to purchase a starting set of board games to make available to our church's college group for use after our weekly meetings.  Our hang-out time afterwards is generally characterized by talking and pancakes (yes, pancakes) and it was thought that the board games might provide some alcohol-free social lubricant.  We did a test run using our own games last Thursday and the response was positive so we got the go-ahead to make it official.

Based on our trial run I was looking for games that had some of the following characteristics:

1. Familiarity to college students/people in general.
2. Easily taught and learned.
3. Relatively short (less than 30 minutes) to play.
4. Good for larger groups (five or more will probably be common).

Not all of the games chosen fit all of these requirements but many come close. And here they are....

I've got a list of further additions if such a need arises but I'd be interested in any suggestions.

Board Game Storage: Dominion - New Case

I know I said I wasn't going to move my Dominion set into a larger box until I needed the room but, well, it just kind of happened.

I made plans to go to Hobby Lobby to pick up a shadow box for another project and printed out the 40%-off coupon they almost always have on their website.  When I got to the store, they were having a sale on picture frames and shadow boxes (another common occurrence) which nullified my coupon. I was in the store, coupon in hand, and even though I didn't have immediate need of it, it seemed even more foolish to not purchase the larger box.  I didn't want to have to make another trip at some later date, right?  And I had the coupon, just begging to be used.

The next day, I was at the hardware store for an entirely different home maintenance project when I stumbled across some 4" x 2' x 1/4" maple slats that would work great for the dividers in the new box.  And they were being clearanced-out for $1 each.  With maybe a little bit less internal conflict over how small pebbles were beginning to turn into avalanches and slippery slopes were being danced upon, I bought five.

In just two days, purely by happenstance, I had purchased all the pieces I needed for upgrading my Dominion box. These pieces were sitting in my house, un-touched and still wrapped, not causing anybody any harm.  And I was doing OK with this; I had a lot on my plate with upcoming trips and trying to get some school work done.  I was actually feeling pretty good with just letting them sit there for a while.

A few days later I had got some time to kill while Katie was making dinner so I go out to the garage and cut the dividers from the maple slats I purchased. A day later I find myself sanding the dividers and the box in preparation for staining, another day I end up beveling one corner of the dividers so that the lid will close once they are installed. And so it goes: a little gluing here, a little staining there...

... and suddenly I'm putting felt into the bottom of the case....

... and transferring the game into the new box.

Its nice to see it with plenty of room for the other expansions and I'm happy with the final results.  Incidentally, the staining was done primarily because my Catan set is housed in the exact same box and I wanted an easy way to tell them apart.  The felt was recommended to help keep the cards from sliding around.  And they look nice, too.

Craftsmanship on this was probably a solid "B" and I am perfectly OK with this.  The stain pooled some in the corners, there is glue acting as a significant structural members to keep the dividers in place and the felt was not cut very precisely.  These imperfections were completely acceptable to me; I have taken the policy that the first time I build something it is effectively a prototype.  Get it done and learn from the process rather than making sure the end result is flawless.

But seriously, this was all a conspiracy of coincidence.  The box practically assembled itself.  Its not my fault.

So when do I get Prosperity, anyway?

Catan: Explorers and Pirates

There's a new expansion for Catan: Explorers and Pirates.  Rather than a fundamental extension of the game like Cities and Knights or Seafarers (in a small way),  it appears to be more like Barabarians and Traders: mini-expansions and scenarios.  I am enough of a completist that I feel a pull to add this to the collection but for now I'm holding back because:

1. I haven't even played through all the Barbarian and Traders variants yet.
2. I haven't been overwhelmed with the added depth of play in said expansion.
3. I don't think I have room in my box for another Catan expansion.

(It may or may not surprise you to know the last reason is the most compelling to me.)

iOS Board Games

Truth be told, the most common type of board game I play are translations of traditional cardboard-and-dice games to the iOS platform.  (Some would say this doesn't make them board games any more but for the purposes of this discussion, I'm not going to worry about it.)  The reasons these get played more often are simple:

1. Often there is a computer controlled player I can play against when my wife doesn't feel up to it.
2. No time spent setting up before-hand and cleaning up afterward.
3. Can play where-ever and whenever the situation dictates; we can start a game in one location and finish it days later somewhere else.
4. iOS games are cheaper than their physical counter-parts.
5. Its easy to carry many, many games on an iOS device.
6. The computer takes care of the rules, making it easier to learn games you haven't played before.
7. The games almost always play much faster, sometimes over twice as fast.

Most of the time, we play the cardboard version of the game first and then go hunting for an implementation in the iOS App store with a few notable exceptions.  Here are the board games I tend to play on our iPad, in no particular order

• Carcassonne - Perhaps the first iOS game I tried and I must say, it is fantastic. This is a wonderful implementation and sets the standard for how board games should work on iOS devices.  The art is great, the sound design is wonderful, the game supports local and internet play.  $10 and worth it if you enjoy the game.
• Scrabble - Another early entrant onto our iPad and also a great implementation. I'm not a big Scrabble person but my wife is and she has put in some serious time with this app.
• Dominion - There's a reason there's no link for this one; it's not available on the app store any more. Unofficial implementation, something about stealing the art work from the original game without permission. They say there's a real, official version coming soon.  It needs to be sooner.
• LeHavre - I had never played this game before I purchased it on the advice of the board gamers throughout the internet.  I'm glad I did.  The game is complicated and takes some getting used to but once you get your head around the iconography and understanding the flow of the game, it is a treat.  My wife and I played in bed before going to sleep every night for about a week.  The game does an excellent job of keeping the mountain of pieces and markers understandable without making the screen too busy.  Our experience  
• Blokus - I love this board game but I have to say, the controls on the iOS version I find fiddley.  It doesn't ruin the game for me but it does frustrate me at times and make the game less enjoyable.  It's cheap, though.  I gues you get what you pay for.
• Phase 10 - This is a fun, simple little card game done almost perfect.  The only mark against it is the artwork: I don't care for it much.  It could be worse, but it could be better.
• Risk - This is a board game that I don't usually play because it often takes forever.  The iOS version solves this problem with a two player game often being completed in under twenty minutes.  The artwork is great and if it had internet play, it would get full marks from me.
• Monopoly - It looks like the version of Monopoly we have is no longer sold in the store but there are several other official versions that should be comparable.  Like Risk, the often slower pacing of the game is solved when the computer handles the money and moves the pieces. We've played this with four players, passing the iPad around and it worked just fine, mostly; the auctions were a bit scrunched. The artwork and animation are wonderful and provide a great experience.

There are other board games I've been looking at for iOS like Tigris and Euphrates, Caylus, and Small World and others.  We'll see if I get around to any of them.

Board Game Storage: Domion - New Dividers

As I've recently written, my Dominion case is too small to hold all the cards in the games and I'm preparing for the day when I'll need to move to a larger box.  One of the changes I'm making is to use cardstock dividers rather than oversized plastic sleeves to keep the sets of cards sorted.  I'm doing this because:

1. Getting all ten kingdom cards back into an over-sized sleeve can be a bit of a pain.  I've been able to get up to twelve cards into those big sleeves but past the first few cards in it takes some effort.  
2. With no dividers it takes some flipping and hunting to find a specific pack of cards to pull out.  The packs are all alphabetized but I can only see the names of the pack I'm looking at and some flipping around is required.
3. The dividers I've chosen to use have common rule clarifications for the cards printed on the divider which I hope will save time if questions come up during play.

To get the most storage space out of the new box, I'm choosing to store my cards vertically and have found some excellent vertical dividers to use.  Here's an example:

I decided to print the dividers out in black-and-white on 110lb. card stock at Kinkos FedEx Office as the cost is $8 vs $55 for the color.  Most of the cards are text anyway and my original plan was to use markers and highlights to color the banners a the top of the cards myself.  After I discussed this with a friend, I'm following his suggestion of printing out just the banners on mailing labels and placing them over the black-and-white banners on the cards.  I've purchased some full-sheet mailing labels,  made a few custom pages of the banners (see below) and printed them off.

And then I spent five years cutting. 

Finally, just had to stick banners on the cards and it was done (another 3 years of effort).

If you look closely you can see the labels weren't quite the same size as the area on the card.  I suspected something like this might happen as different printers have different invisible margins for the same size physical page. I probably could have figured out a way around this but this works well enough.  As always, I consider my first attempt at anything my prototype and these dividers fit the bill.

Board Game Storage: Dominion - Small Case

Dominion is similar to Carcassonne in that it seems to be made for expansions.  Both games come with a base set of cards/tiles with a defined set of play options with additional expansions adding new options, modifying existing rules, and adding new mechanisms. In Carcassonne these expansions are mostly tiles with a few new pieces and Dominion is highly similar: cards with a few new pieces.  And when I say "cards" I mean "lots of cards".  The base game of Dominion is 500 cards, standard expansions are 300 cards, mini expansions are 150 cards, and large expansions are another 500; the complete game has almost 3000 cards.

I don't have all the expansions so I was able to use my old Catan box to store what I do have (base set, Intrigue, Alchemy, and Dark Ages):

I've chosen to sleeve all of my cards so that as I add expansions over time the older cards will not look significantly more worn than the newer cards.  (I recently had a chance to play with a Dominion set that had been slowly grown over time and had not been sleeved.  The old cards looked very, very old which, added some charm to them.  These were the old-guard cards that had been there from the beginning. It also meant it that these cards were not anonymous and very easy to identify in the deck.)  

Each set of ten kingdom cards is placed in a larger sleeve to keep them together and these packs are then stacked into the box.  I've also made packs for the Curse cards and a starting deck for each player, just to help minimize the set-up time for the game.  

The guides/dividers are made from corrugated plastic that I had left over from a photography project. (This is the kind of plastic that is used for yard signs commonly seen during election season.)  The dividers are taped into the box as I was more interested in getting something put together that would work than doing something that looked really nice.  The randomizer cards are stored over on the lower right in their own little area and the extra sleeves I have left over are in the upper right.  Instructions are stored in the lid.

As you can see, the box is pretty full and I there are a number of other expansions that will need a home.  I've already decided if/when I get another expansion I'll be moving over to a larger box, the same one I'm using for Catan right now.  I've been inspired by an online discussion of Dominion players to go this route which will slightly modify what I've done so far.  Rather than using larger sleeves, I'm going to be printing out some cardstock dividers for each deck of kingdom cards.  The lane dividers in the new box will be wood and I'm thinking of putting felt on the interior base of the box to keep the cards from sliding around as much.  Oh, and I plan to store the cards vertically rather than horizontally.

I'll keep you updated as the new Dominion storage box evolves.

Board Game Storage: Carcassonne

For a birthday a few years ago my wife purchase me a Carcassonne Big Box: the base game and multiple expansions in one box (and the box was big at 39" x 18.75" x 55.75").  (She claims I had mentioned being interested in it; I think she was reading my mind and gave me one of the best gifts I've ever received because it was a complete surprise.)  But the Big Box was way too big for what boils down to a large stack of cardboard tiles.  My experience in condensing my game of Settlers of Catan gave me confidence that something similar could be done here.

Back to Hobby Lobby with a pile of Carcassonne tiles in tow, searching for boxes that these tiles could fit in neatly.  I'm sure the Hobby Lobby staff were not quite sure to do with the grown man sitting on the floor at the back of the store, trying box after box in various permutations, but my efforts made them (a small amount) of money that day.  The result is the cleanest, densest game storage box to date.

Along the back of the larger wooden box are my self-designed and hand-crafted tuck-boxes for the player game pieces.  Unlike the treasure chests in my Catan box, these comfortably fit all the pieces I have with no special stacking effort.  The manilla one on the end is empty and I leave it in as a spacer to keep all the others snug relatively immobile.

In front of the player piece tuck boxes are three more wooden boxes that contain all the Carcassonne tile sets; more details in the following picture.  The scoring board in front lays on top of the player pieces and the three tile boxes quite easily.  The lid closes cleanly with no hassle.

Looking at the three tile boxes you can see I've made tuck-boxes for each expansion that I own.  Working from left to right you can see Inns and Cathedrals (green), base set (no tuck-box), Tower (black), King and Cult, Count, and River II (all three in the blue box), Traders and Builders (gray), Princess and Dragon (red), Bridges, Castles and Bazaars (manilla), Abbey and Manor (yellow). I made the labels on the flaps for each one and the underside of the flap lists the number of tiles for each expansion; I can't tell you how much of a good idea that has turned out to be when it comes time for clean-up.

And when there are extra pieces for an expansion that don't fit in the tuck-boxes...?

Using some scrap metal I had laying around and some not-very-strong magnetic-tape, I constructed caps that created an enclosed space in the lids of the two appropriate boxes.  I used a little bit of gaffer tape (motto: "We do all the things you think duct tape can do but actually can't.") to create pull tabs to make the caps easily removable.  It takes a little wiggling to get these metal caps into place but the don't come out inadvertently.

Using a similar principle, I created a false bottom for the large box to store the instructions and the tile-holder that comes with Tower.  Unfortunately, the magnetic tape is only marginally strong enough to hold the metal lid in place.  Most of the time its not an issue as the box is either resting on the table bottom side down or being carried with a hand or two helping hold the bottom in place.

Incidentally, deconstructing the tower and folding it flat is probably not a good way to ensure its longevity.  Its a wonderful thematic addition to the game and provides an easy way to pass around the stacks of tile for all players to draw from but the regular assembly and dis-assembly will certainly shorten its life.  It is fun while it lasts, though.

Give how nearly perfectly this set-up stores all that I have of Carcassonne, I'm reticent to acquire any more expansions.  There aren't that many that I'm missing and what I have is more than enough, especially when multiple expansions are used in a single game.  And to be honest, Catapult really doesn't interest me that much.

Board Game Storage: Catan

As I've mentioned previously, Settlers of Catan was the game that started it all for me as it was the first modern board game I purchased.  (I actually can't remember if I purchased it or it was a gift. Regardless.)  This was back in 2005 and the game was clearly gaining traction but you couldn't find it in Barnes and Noble yet; there was still a bit of a niche aspect to it.

To make the game more profitable for its producers, it was sold in a very modular style: the basic game played four players and you could buy an expansion that would allow you to add two more players.  In fact, each major expansion (Cities and Knights, Seafarers, and Barbarians and Traders) has progressed in this two-fold manner. About the time I owned the the base game and Cities and Knights for up to six players I realized I had a serious storage problem.  This was one game (at least in my mind) spread across four boxes with a lot of empty space in each box; it was time to consolidate. Over Christmas back in Portland I picked up an art box and six treasure chests and began the process.

I found some powdered dye online in the same six colors as the Catan pieces for each player and with a little bit of trial and error, was able to color the six treasure chests to match.  This very minor innovation has been the creative foundation of the storage system and continues top impress other Catan players when I bring out my set for us to play.

In fact, until last year, that first version of the Catan box worked quite well.  I kept the cards, tiles and border pieces in rubber bands (which often broke and were replaced), the chips in little plastic bags and each player's game pieces in a colored wooden treasure chest.  Life was reasonably good; everything fit snuggly in that art box.

Then Traders and Barbarians came out and I had a problem. Though it was a tight squeeze I was able to fit all the player pieces in the existing treasure chests.  (No more haphazard dumping of the pieces back in, though; now they had to be meticulously stacked to fit.  I consider this the after-game game and most of my fellow players agree.)  The rest of the new cards, tiles, and pieces were a no-go, though, and the only solution was a bigger artbox.  I made a trip to Hobby Lobby and picket up a larger box along with a few other sub-boxes and with a bit of organizational effort, found a way to make it work.

The last piece of the organizational puzzle was tuck-boxes: folded pieces of card stock assembled to form a box. I had already been making tuck-boxes for my the box I was using to store Carcassonne and  when I decided to apply the idea to my Catan box.  The tuck-boxes  allowed me to keep the cards and pieces for each expansion separate and easily accessible.  In fact, I stumbled across some very professional tuck-box designs for storing the resource hexes and with the help of FedEx Office (which will always be Kinko's in my mind), printed and folded these nifty little creations.

And here is the final product, packed and opened up for a fuller view:

The wooden box in the upper left contain my custom color-coded tuck-boxes for the cars of the various expansions (black for Catan, green for Cities and Knights, and red for Traders and Barbarians).  The box in the top right is entirely devoted to just some of the new pieces in Traders and Barbarians; the golden men (barbarians, I think) and camels are their own boxes down below on the far right.  The fancy "professional" hex tuck-boxes are in the center with the hex markers in their little boxes to the far right.  (I've sorted those markers into the four-player and six-player variant with the Seaside pieces also on their own). Along the bottom are the colored treasure chests for the player pieces and the slot in the top of the box contains the rules and the border pieces (not very visible).

There are a few minor changes I'd like to make to this set-up.  Since my original game is the older artwork and style, I have more ocean hexes than the newer version and there is no tuck-box for them. I might just print out another page of the ocean hex tuck-box and put them in in that.  The cardboard boxes on the right outside the box are not marked on the outside so there is also a bit of guess-and-check to find the appropriate pieces; something needs to change about that.

It is true that the box is large (16.5" x 13" x 4.5") and heavy but it all fits and relatively compactly as well.  The game doesn't travel back to Portland on the airplane any more but I've indoctrinated my family enough into modern board games that they have plenty of their own now. Of the three "custom" storage boxes I've done so far, the evolution of this box has been the most involved and demanding from a design standpoint.  But its done (more or less) and I like it.

Gotta love those treasure chests, too.

Board Games

I have my good friends Troy and Lauren to thank for my love of modern board games; they spoke often of their weekly games of Settlers of Catan and I had never seen a board game with such a devoted following. I didn't get a chance to play the game until about a year later and I loved it.  It didn't take long until I had graduated to Cities and Knights and then Seafarers (and just recently, Traders and Barbarians). The game was wonderful, varied, easy enough to get other non-gamers playing, and it became the catalyst to my further exploration into board games.

It was several years after my first game of Catan that I was recruited into the first and only board game group of which I've been a part.  The four of us, all trained as engineers, got together once a month to play board games that we figured less analytical people would find boring, tedious, and/or  overly taxing.  I don't remember what we played in those early games but as we met over the years our repertoire expanded to include Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, and Agricola.  We also played Thurn and Taxis and Scotland Yard once but they didn't seem to have the staying power. The group has grown in membership over the years as our schedules have become busier but most board game nights garner only four or five attendees.

The most unique addition to the pool has been Power Grid and not because of anything particularly unique about the game but because none of us in the group had ever played it prior to our first game together.  I was the speculative purchaser of the game and spent the day of the game reading and re-reading the rules, trying to get my  head around how the game played.  When it came time to play that evening I discovered the rules had been left at home; we downloaded a PDF and made do.  In fact, the game has been very popular in my group and we play it often.

The most recent new addition has been Dominion; it was recommended by a group member who had played it with some other friends.  I bought a copy of the base set on this recommendation and have enjoyed it a great deal, so much so that I have also ended up with the Intrigue, Alchemy, and Dark Ages expansion.  One of these days I'm sure the remaining expansions (Seaside, Prosperity, Cornucopia, and Hinterlands) will make there way over.

And there's more to say about this hobby: the storage systems I've assembled for games and their expansions, the iOS versions of games we play, the simpler, smaller games that we use to introduce our friends to modern board games....

I'm sure I'll get around to some of these later but I'll leave you with this: The game of choice between my wife and I right now is the iOS version of Le Havre.  We don't own the physical game but have played this version in bed many evenings over the past three weeks.  She really loves it and it goes without saying we wouldn't play it near as much if we had to set it up and take it down every time we wanted to play; as my favorite review of the game says, "Its Chit-tastic!".