Things I've created that turned out alright

Here is a picture of a few things I've created in the last while that have turned out alright. On the bottom right is my two-tone plastic poker chips. They're especially useful for Bang, to show each players' health.

On the bottom left is a DS stylus fastened into the shell of a crappy old mechanical pencil. I got the idea from a much nicer looking stylus pen, but this pen is much more comfortable to hold and use than the stylus itself. Of course, it's not as portable as the stylus, which fits into the DS case.

At the top is a box that I got from the dollar store to hold my Harry Potter cards (and perhaps one day it will hold Magic cards as well). I made some inserts out of cardstock to make three rows for the cards. Everything fits snugly (or at least it would if I had more cards to put in the box). They fit all regular size playing cards, but cards with sleeves on them are a bit too bulky.

I'm just waiting to place my board game order, now. Of the five games that I'm quite certain will go on my order, three are out of stock so I'll have to wait about a month.

Now I'm going to play euchre online.

Listening to... Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Link of the moment... Yahoo is all funky looking now

The one about board game accessories

You know what I'd like to acheive? I'd like to have more, smaller blogposts that are dedicated to only one subject. It seems pretty stupid to use labels on my posts at all if every single one uses "board games, video games". I guess on that note, I should use more labels as well (but then again I'm not sure if there's even a point in using labels at all). Anyways, in hopes of getting one step closer to that goal, I'm going to dedicate this post to all the small thoughts I've had about board game accessories.

The first accessory I started working on is a new gaming table (or poker table, if want). It's nearing completion, but the next step (padding and attaching the vinyl rail) is likely the most difficult, and shows off any mistakes I make the most. My dad has been a huge help, but at the same time he's sort of taken over my project and has made a few decisions without me that I think are making things stray from my intended plan.

Also on this note, I'm giving my older table a bit of a facelift. Nothing cosmetic, but throwing a few screws in the right places will make it a lot sturdier. I also took 2 inches off each leg for the following reason: in a poker game, each player only really needs to see the cards in front of them. In a board game, each player has to see the whole board to get a good grasp of what's going on. So, it follows that a lower table will let you get a higher view of the whole board more readily. I really hope that it's not too low so as to impede anyone's sitting, but I'll have a slew of tables that serve slightly different purposes.

Another great idea I had is to use a cribbage board to keep score for games for which one needs to keep score. For instance, Ticket to Ride has a track around the edge which isn't that bad, but Lost Cities has no way to keep score with the game (so it's usually pen and paper). Many a people have complained about Carcassonne's board only going to 50, so it's hard to see when someone has passed 50 points. I already had red, blue, and green pegs, I spraypainted some extra ones black (turned out pretty nice), and I'm using white pegs to represent yellow, so that it covers all the basic colours. I would like to have yellow pegs, but acrylic paint didn't work, and I don't want to go spend five bucks on yellow spraypaint for three measly cribbage pegs.

While on a spraypaint high (not literally), I went crazy with painting some Memoir '44 pieces. I spraypainted the sandbags tan, and the hedgehogs and wire bundles in grey. I think they look so much nicer than the default army colours. My neighbour had the grey paint, so it didn't really cost me anything but a few minutes. I also used the tan paint to spraypaint the bases of the Through the Desert desert (green palm tree trunks? blech).

I also spraypainted one side of a whole slew of red plastic poker chips black. I plan to use these wherever I need to represent life points. The only thing I can think of off the bat is Bang, where you'd normally use a card covering part of another card to represent your health. It's easy to budge a card out of place, and difficult to see how close to death someone across the table is. Again, well worth the few minutes it took.

I picked up a bunch of plastic storage boxes from the dollar store. I'm using two for Memoir '44 whose pieces are hard to manage. The two fit very nice and snug in the game box. They fit just about everything perfectly, besides the cards and terrain hexes which I still keep in the remnants of the plastic insert. I'm using another for Through the Desert which will make setup time much faster, and it too fits perfectly in the game box. I'm using a fourth one for general game pieces (namely dice, those coloured cribbage pegs, and those red and black chips I mentioned earlier). Each one of those boxes is a dollar VERY well spent.

Lastly, I plan to get some 1" by 1" wood and cutting some shallow, angled cuts into it to make a bunch of 10" playing card holders. I got the idea from the plastic holders that Memoir '44 has. They make it much easier to consider all your options for any games that use cards with text on them. In longer games, too, it gets annoying to have to keep all your cards clenched in your hand.

Well, I think that's all! I'm also trying to get my poker chips back from Adam (who seems to have left them at a friend's house), as I've heard from other gamers that poker chips are far superior to paper money or cardboard coins for any game that uses currency that is passed around a lot.

Listening to... Dcay - In Step
Link of the moment... For only $15 at the Superstore, I couldn't refuse

Hit the peg! Hit the peg!

Argh, thanks for waking me up, truck outside. Curse you!

I feel like I've been quarantined in my house lately. I can't seem to find anyone to hang out with. No one is phoning me, and anyone I phone is busy or not answering their phone. It was a pretty boring weekend; I just watched some movies on the movie networks.

Spiderman 3 spoilers
I watched Spiderman 3 on Friday, at a matinee. The theatre was only about half full. I don't want to give a full on review (I'm not a movie buff, so anything I say would just be coming from someone who doesn't know shit about production values and such), but I do want to say that I'm unimpressed with the way venom turned out. Topher Grace is not the right casting choice! They didn't put enough effort into building up Eddie Brock's hatred for Spiderman and Peter Parker. We saw Eddie lose his job, and have his camera broken, and even have his "girlfriend" stolen, but I never got the impression that it was all adding up and making him go mad.

On top of that, I didn't like how after Eddie supposedly reached his breaking point, he's still making wisecracks to Spiderman. I like how Scott Dewitt says that "Venom was the same dork as Eric from That 70's Show. Venom. Not the guy that turns into Venom. Venom himself is a dork". Venom and Eddie Brock really are two different characters, and there wasn't enough in the movie to get that point across. One thing I really missed not seeing as well was Venom calling himself "we", to show that the symbiote is a part of him, and not just something to enhance his powers. But enough of that.
END Spiderman 3 spoilers

I'm QUITE excited about my games night tomorrow night. I've had this fascination with werewolf ever since I had the idea of playing it. I've put a fair amount of effort into considering which roles to use, and how to handle voting in the day phase. I've whipped up some reference sheets for the roles and their powers, set aside some playing cards to assign roles to players, and even scrounged up some poker chips in hopes that the assist in the voting process. Now, all I've got to do is wait to actually play the game!

I picked up the Megaman X collection for Gamecube, as previously mentioned. So far I've blown through the first game, and I'm starting on the second. Even with all my heart tanks and four full energy tanks, the final boss took me countless attempts. Most of the time, I wouldn't be watching my health bar and found myself dead before I could use an energy tank. If memory serves correctly, X2 is just as hard, if not harder if I try to get the good ending by defeating three extra bosses.

I've been thinking of building my own poker table, using one of these designs. My old one is sort of in shambles, and if my weekly games nights actually pan out, having a nice table would go a long way. I've never been that good at that sort of stuff though. Even when I just changed the fabric on the old table, it came out in worse whape than when I started. I think I'm just too impatient. If I throw actual carpentry on top of that, I'm sure the end product won't turn out as it looks in my dreams. Still, I think stuff like that can be fun, and it's nice to have something that you built with your own two hands and can be proud of. I think I'll just mull over it some more.

Listening to... Death By Stereo - These are a Few of my Favorite Things
Link of the moment... They make it look so easy!