Success - Dixit Game insert

Here is the dixit insert. Originally printed in mostly white, it ended up milimeters too tall, so i reworked everything and came up with the black version - it has space for the original game + all 7 expansions, and can probably squeeze the promo cards in there as well

Dunno what to do when the next expansion comes out...

Cosmic Encounters Updates

I have been busily printing, adjusting, scratching my head.

Like I've said, I don't have the expansions, So I'm not sure how great this solution will be. I have been printing out the pieces, just a little time consuming as my printer is too small to print more than one piece at a time, including the lids!

I also might need to find a different solution for the Alien cards. I can fit the holder on my bed, but once it starts closing the spaces on the top layer, everything starts falling apart and the print actually looks distorted., the plastic widens, and become loosely melted together. I did three attempts - the first attempt died when my power died. The second had the horrible issue with the layers, and the third I stopped when it started having the same issues, even though I slowed the speed.

I probably need to print it without the holes, or make the holes smaller. I have noticed that the Printrbot doesn't like fine detail when it's high up.

Back to the drawing Board on Cosmic Encounter

I somehow managed to mismeasure my box  I can't fit the player boxes on their sides like I thought, because I have about 4 less millimeters than I thought I did. I think I can make, basically 2x2x2 and it should still allow much room for tokens.. though I will probably need to remeasure everything to make sure it will fit in my slightly smaller box.

Here are the pictures of my successful print that utterly failed.

I commit seppuku now.

Sketchup: Cosmic Encounters

I have had some time to start review, revising and transcribing my designs from my clipboard of graph paper to Google Sketchup I am a little worried because I only have the base game, no expansions. I looked up the card pieces so that I could plan out how much empty space to leave for each card type (squeezing them in with sleeves, because you kooky boardgamers love sleeving your cards!) I actually had to use a mixture of boardgamegeek and the PDF copies of the rules that come with every expansion, as they give a perfect breakdown of all of the content included in each set.

In order to fit all the cards with sleeves from the base game + six expansions on my printer, I had to cut the biggest card section (for flare cards) into their own print. I can still fit them onto the printer side by side, just not length wise. I have one of the smaller printers, so hopefully it works for the folks on thingiverse.

I also design a large holder for the alien cards, based on ZekTheMad's large card holder on the Eldritch Horror project I printed earlier in the month.. I did all the measurements myself, just based on his.. I liked the look of the rounded slots.

With the expansions, two should be just perfect. they will fit in the box with some space to place the randomly sized cardboard pieces on top

I decided that the best way to store all 8 sets of player pieces would be to make a lipped box and store them on their side.  I need to print one of them and test it with the player pieces, since the inside is just enough to fit the round planets. The rest of the box should be good though, more than enough space to fit all the ships as well as those planets, if the planets fit.

In the remaining space, in the corner at the end of the cards, I designed a generic token tray with a lid. It should fit 2 trays on top of each other.

Now, this said - I have no flipping idea if this will be enough storage space for all of the tokens and extra cardboard cutouts that came with the expansions. I may test my prints on Nameless Roommate #1's copy, as he has all but one expansion. I feel that this will give me a good enough feeling for what will fit.

My next step is to print out the files (I am still just waiting on the some plastic, my shipment from push plastics is est. delivery date of 12-6 (omg, wtf, amazon has ruined me) So when a CamelCamelCamel alert came up for Dixit Quest, I added some cheap PLA to the order. It should be here today, so I just need to export my sketchup files to the right format(.stl), and prepare my bed for printing. Hopefully I will have some kind of picture of a printed item to show everyone tomorrow.

Cross your fingers!

Designing an Insert: Stage 1

Hey guys! While I am out of PLA, impatiently awaiting my refill, I decided to sit down and start mocking up a design, so I have something to print when it gets here.I sat down with some graph paper, calipers, pencils, rulers and a couple boxes of games I have issues sorting/ storing/ setting up. 

The first game on the list was Dixit, one of my favorite party games. The issue I have with this game box is that it only accomodates the base plus 3 expansions as it is.  The cards are too large to sit on their side, so I will have to put them at an angle. The hardest part was holding the cards in place while I calculated angles. I had to take into account that the board still needs to fit in the box and there are player pieces. The original design for storing pieces is good. instead of having it 2x3, I thought it out and figured that it could go 1x6 and fit perfectly in the negative space. This drawing, of course, shows none of that - just some degree and measurement notes - I did get around to drawing it all out to work out my thoughts and keep them fresh.

The second game I started designs for was Cosmic Encounter. I don't have the expansions, but I looked into how many pieces each one added - Hopefully the design leaves enough space to add all of those in perfectly. most of it was adding extra players, which are easy to count, and extra cards, hopefully the card area is big enough for that. The alien cards, with all 6(?) expansion will triple the big card height. I am hoping a lot of the extra stuff they add will fit into the two MISC areas I had left over. Most of this was super easy, just squares, no angles, making sure the pieces will fit into smaller boxes an

For now all I have are a couple hand sketches, but my next step will be translating them into sketchup designs. (and uploading my first all-original designs to thingiverse!) Hopefully my next post will have some peeks at what I have mocked up.

Holiday Game Night: Chaotic Neutral Catan.

While I patiently await my shipment of PLA from Push Plastics that I grabbed on sale during the holiday, I have been filling my time with design and playing games. The designs I am not quite ready to start posting yet, as it's mostly just notes and measurements, nothing in the computer, just paper. I will have multiple posts once they are ready though, promise! 

So here are some photos from our game night last night, hosted by My Friend and Her Husband. His Friend joined us as well. 4 players is a great number for a lot of games! Enough to allow a buffer between super competitive people, and enough to play party games. (My Friend and Her Husband are the super competitive ones and having another person there dilutes the competitiveness. Their motto is "I don't care who wins, as long as it's not my spouse" Which I threatened to have put on their tombstones.

We started the name with the third round of Pandemic Legacy(not shown), a game that comes with a sticker sheet and hidden components you only add to the game when prompted. The premise of the game is that you only get a limited amount of plays, and the results are permanent and carry over between games.

Next we played Lanterns The Harvest Festival(also not shown) I forget to take pictures early in the night, until we are putting the game away. I had a slight issue with understanding rules (you go until all the tiles are placed, not until all the tiles are picked up) and it kind of ruined the game because strategies were planned wrong. I like it and the real rules make it more fun. I feel that Her Husband would have liked it 100x better if he hadn't squandered his win in ordered to sabotage My Friend.

Third, Splendor. My Friend won, I was close second! I love Splendor, it's a light game that could probably work well with any theme - baked goods, clothing/textiles, butcher shop. . but they chose Gems, and I like that! I would love to splurge on the upgraded gem tokens, or even non-canonical, acrylic gems - I feel that might be a cool upgrade that would be pretty thematic. You start trading in gems, then trade them to buy access to a mine, a trade route and then a front end shop. First to 15 points wins.

Then we played a round of Settlers of Catan, a favorite in My Friend's house. They have the nice anniversary edition in a gorgeous wooden box, and all wooden pieces, and it sees frequent plays. Her Husband won. It was . . a standard Catan game. I rarely ever win Catan. I started without a wood source and only got onto the #12 wood. (wood being a resource which is needed to do most things) I like Catan, but I win 1 out of maybe 20 games, so I have taken a self-imposed "lol-random" stance on how I play it. Chaotic Neutral.

While My Friend threw dinner together we played a quick round of King of Tokyo. I decided to go full aggro and kept Tokyo for many turns, and the turn before they killed me, I did 5 damage! I was happy. If I had made it one more round, I would have won on sweet Tokyo Occupation points.

We had a quick, delicious dinner of stuffed peppers and then cleaned up for Eclipse, their newest game. This is our second game of Eclipse, as we played last weekend as well (a rare two-weekend-in-a-row event!) We played a long game, with lots of alliances, no betrayals (somehow) and a very close ending, with My Friend at 38, Her husband at 35, I had 30, and the His Friend got a 28, which really isn't a bad scoring spread. Eclipse reminds me a lot of Xia: Legends of a drift system, for it's exploration and Terra Mystica for it's resource management/earning system. There is room for as much or as little combat as possible. You can form alliances, betray alliances, fight NPCs, explore and claim new space.

We also finished the night with two rounds of Codenames. We paired "Chicks V Dicks" Me and My Friend vs Her Husband and His Friend. His Friend and I played Spymaster and did pretty great, our clues and pattern were spot on!  We got a 4-card-success!

On My Friend's first turn as spymaster, after I missed one, she blurted out "It was clearly Nurse!" to which Her Husband ruthlessly started calling her a cheater and we had to start over. He was angry because he had a perfect 4-clue lined up.

We ended on a funny note, as it was starting to get late.

Let me know if my regaling of game night aren't what you wanna hear, I'm trying to fine tune my content.

COMC: Jam-packedest!

I am busy with a design project, prompted by a conversation on reddit. Here's a gratuitous shot of my Ikea expedit and some new games I picked up. Can you pick out the new editions? Hint: one of them was crammed into the jam-packedest square. Too bad there are still 2 TTR games, so I may need 2 squares afterall, Though I havent gotten very many plays out of any of them except TTR:US. 

When we have our own place and I can pull my other shelves out from storage, those 9 non-game shelves on the bottom can go. A book shelf for my comics, a 2x2 kallax for my records and my art supplies and tools can go into their own areas.

At our old place I had two small folding bookshelves for all my magic the gathering boxes. We also had room to display all the dominion boxes, even though all the content is in the wooden box at the top right of that picture.

Also - there is a sheet hanging on the other side of the shelf, for privacy, as my bedroom is on the other side of it.

ANyway - This is just a post for posts sake, while I work on designing some box inserts. Send me pics of your game collections! How do you store everything?

She's got a ticket to ride, but she don't care.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Today I have some random garbage I have been working on, no finished project, just a little insight into my work process, which is kind of wasteful.

I have been looking into a storage solution for ticket to ride that fits for me. I have taken out and done who-knows-what with the original insert, so I need to make this work in a barely structured box space.  I also need to find(but haven't yet) a good solution for my cards (and I have 1910, so they are all full sized.)

For some reason all of the storage solutions I found pre-designed are weird. None of the lids snap or slide into place. This feels like it's a great way to end up needing to sort all your trains every time you want to play.

I can't find the source for the first box I had - it has been in my "to print" folder for a while, and of course I didnt save anything to attribute - but I didn't design it, if you did, give me a holler and i'll throw the link up.

the breakdown of what you are seeing:

Green & blue are in a simple design from thingiverse.. had to rubber band the lid to the body. I had an issue printing the lid and ended up needing to carve/cut up the lid to make it fit. I also adjusted the lip a bit so the lid would sink down into the box. But it has to be rubber-banded closed, which I hate. And you have to set the trains in just right (at least for the american map.) While I don't mind this, I know a lot of my friends and playgroups would hate this.

Yellow is in a second original design from thingiverse, designed by Nicofr57. I didn't like the relationship between the lid and body so i started changing stuff. The original design was made to allow you to keep the original insert for TTR:Europe. You should set the body in the cup, place the oversized lid on top, and then use a spacer to hold it in place and stack another body on top.

 Since I also have TTR:USA, and have lost the insert for it, i needed a slightly enhanced storage solution.


Black is modification no.1 from Nicofr57's design, All I did was raise the outer edge 3mm and in Cura set the width/height to fit inside the outer rim (66mm x 95mm) This is good and looks great when the bin is full and the lid is on. However, this didn't really solve my "trains all over the place when transported" issue, without rubberbands.

Red is in modification no.2 This is my favorite so far. I lifted the outer rim another 1mm and then pulled that 1mm out so that it would form a lip on 3 sides. I then lowered the front side to match the original height, that was preserved by the inner divider. The only issue I am having here is that it is a little tight. I think I can just make the change in Cura on the lid (make it half a millimeter thinner and take a millimeter off the width. I also added 3 mm to the length to create an overhang to give the player something to hold onto to yank that lid out.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with modification no.2, and once I get a Filament refil, I will be printing two sets  - one for TTR:Europe and one for TTR: USA

A cause for calibration - or - Success! Codenames

I am going to spend the day calibrating, after a "success" but the successful print didn't work as intended. So I am going to use some calibration tools and document that, inc. tomorrow or maybe Wednesday.

In the meantime, here was an actual success! An organizer for the games Codenames. I had to use sketchup to edit it a littl bit, removing 2mm from each end do it would fit on my printer.  The original size would have fit perfectly the other orientation in the box, but this way, the hourglass holds it in place perfectly.

Success! - Eldritch Horror

Earlier in the week I posted some reviews of my favorite boardgame accessories - The Broken Token inserts.

While I love Broken Token, and would love to spend all my extra money on them, they don't have solutions for every boardgame I own. That said, every single new 3d printing site with free files is bombarded by searches for my favorite topic - board games, box organizers, specific board game titles, because some people don't know how to properly tag or title or describe their stuff to be easily found.

I have a folder of all the STLs I have found, waiting to be printed. Amongst them is a folder for a custom Eldritch Horror insert that ZektheMad created over on thingiverse. He did a great job! Except that two of the 9 pieces are too large for my tiny printer to accommodate. I printed the 7/9 small pieces that would fit, and then spent 4 or 5 days pouting about the remaining pieces, contemplating seppeku.. or even just contacting Zek or one of the commenters on that "thing" requesting the file. He did provide a .dwg file, but I don't have the software or knowledge of how to handle that/make google sketchup handle it. In reality, I was just hectic and busy the last week or so, trying to keep up with my blogging goals, and having a hard time of it.

I was able to get the original .stl files into Google Sketchup and cut them in half. Or really more like 2/3 + 1/3 & 3/4+ 1/4, making them just small enough to fit on my printer and then to be glued back together on before being placed in the box.

I actually got the chance to finally post something on thingiverse! It's just a remix, but it already has likes, shares and collection adds..

Down to the nitty gritty! It took me a while to print all the pieces, I only batched a couple of the smaller pieces, but the rest were individual.  There are supposed to be 9 pieces, but I have 11, since I had to cut two up. There is still enough room in the box for another board. Since I don't have any of the expansions yet, I may just print a couple spacers to hold everything in place.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with the print. I feel that this might have been underwhelming and built up.

Broken Token advertisement.

Good morning!

As you know, I love boardgaming. Modern boardgames come with tons of cards, dice, & carcboard, plastic, and wooden pieces. When I started collecting the "cool" thing to do, or really most popular thing, was to store all the components in baggies. This is well and good when you have one or two types of tokens. But the more games I get, the more complicated everything is, and there are often 15+ separate components. This means the time it takes to set up and put away is longer, and often kind of messy. Does my old organized soul some harm to see all those pieces scattered everywhere and getting dropped off the table!

There are people that post these amazing foamcore custom inserts, with separate compartments for everything. They are amazing, but foamcore is the devil, and I have no skill or patience for it at all.

Then a few years ago a company popped up called The Broken Token. I love them! They laser cut sheets of 1/8" baltic birch wood and acrylic. You  pop them out of the thin sheets and assemble the neatly designed insert that fits the box perfectly. Of course they have a limited amount of games they have designs for, but their library is expanding all the time - The first time I shopped there, they only had a handful of game box designed, and now they have boxes for over 70 unique games.

The first Broken Token insert I bought was for my Dominion collection. I got a hell of a deal on the base set and the first 8 expansions, plus all the promo cards that were available at the time. Using 9 separate boxes is crazy, and there werent a lot of one-box solutions, so I bought a wooden artist case from Hobby Lobby and the Broken Token dominion insert, then, for dramatic flair, I woodburned the logo for the game and designed my name in matching font. The bummer of this is that I had to print and cut out all those dang dividers, it took forever. At the time, and to this day, the Hobby Lobby/Broken Token combo is the best storage solution. And there still isnt a reasonable/affordable solution for the inserts. I also made one for Nameless Roommate #1., who actually still has his, but hasn't put his collection in the box yet.

There's a lot of room to rearrange things and set it up how you want, which has pros and cons. it leaves room for expansions (or did when I bought mine, but there have been two full expansions since then.) On the other hand, a couple things are kind of awkwardly placed in the box, like coins and place holders. 9/10.. I would still buy it again, I feel like there is a bit of room for improvement.

The second broken token I purchased was for Dead of Winter by Plaid Hat Games. It fits snuggly in the box and perfectly accommodates all the pieces with compartments large enough to get your fingers in and pick up pieces unlike some of the alternatives, like Plano storage units. It also is perfect for game play, because set up is just taking some trays out of the box and choosing which scenario to play, instead of opening 50 baggies and dumping pieces all over the table. Perfect, 10/10, would buy again.

I inherited my third insert when I bought an old friend's Android Netrunner collection. it suits its purpose.. Adequate. Also I wish there was a better solution for all the tokens that came with it.. I have a 3d printer solution in the queue for my printer, but I don't play very often, so it's low priority. Honestly, I would give it a 5/10 for personal preference. There is enough give in the box that it allows the cards to slip under the dividers when the box is in motion/on its side. I would buy this, but only if I had bought all the inserts for my other games first, this might be on my list for "completionist" reasons.

Then Plaid Hat Games announced a sequel to Dead of Winter: Dead of Winter: The Long Night and it had even more pieces than the original! I contemplated buying the original DoW insert, but put it off for a bit. That's when they announced the Long Night specific design - which was great because it had a bunch of different things that needed to be sorted 4 different types of character/monster standees and 5 or 6 extra item types. 8/10 - there are a couple issues with how the stand up figures fit into their designated areas. I had to keep the cardboard separate from the plastic stands to make the trays fit flat. Also, there are some modules and I feel that there a couple extra card slots would have been nice for storage.

The only downside is that they *are* made out of wood, so it adds some weight to the box. The flip of that is that is adds sturdiness to the box. The newest insert used some acrylic for card dividers, I am not sure if that changes the weight or not. I do, however, wonder if there is a future in 100% acrylic inserts. I know I am working on printing a passable substitute for Eldritch Horror (which they don't support yet.)

So I have 100+ games and 4 broken token inserts, and an ever growing wish list as they release new ones. They are pretty fairly priced, the pinserts are in the $20-$30 range. I just have a lot of games to Token, and sometimes that is something I would rather spend on a discounted game. I have a pretty good wishlist going, and maybe when I'm rich I will review the rest of them :)

Catch Up Game Night! Jamaica, Broom Service, SellSwords & Lanterns

Last night we had a board game night. My roommate and I are both avid collectors of board games, and have extensive wishlists. Whenever a big sale comes up, I generally crunch numbers against my CamelCamelCamel.com report and if it comes to equal or lower than the lowest amazon price in history, I will buy. I also get CamelCamelCamel alerts whenever an item on my list drops below the lowest historic price. I have given myself a pass to buy any game on my list if it drops to a historic low. (this works for my budgets, but usually 5 or six will drop over the same weekend.) The down side of this is that I don't have time to play them all as soon as I get them, so they start accumulating.

Anyway, the short of it is that the two of us have limited time between my full time job, Australian schedule and two time-draining hobbies, and his schooling. The stack of unplayed games is growing. We finally had a 3-day weekend to catch up and play through some of the unplayed games. We got 4 down and still have many left - most of the games left are heavy, thematic games, that take 90 minutes just to read through the instructions.

Games we played include his copy of Jamaica, a pirate themed racing game. You have a hand of three cards that have two actions. The rotating roll of Captain is in charge for the round - in charge of rolling two dice and arranging the results into Day and Night. You then choose one of your cards and play it - using the two dice to tell you how to complete each action. You can store things in your hull, but only 5 sections. You use the items to pay for the spaces you land on. In two player mode we had to fight with a Ghost Ship, which balances out heavy leads. The Captain for each round takes turn controlling the ghost ship. We both enjoyed it, there wasn't a ton of direct combat in our game, but there is definitely a place for PvP or even PvE with the ghost ship.

I enjoyed it and would play again. I am pretty sure he liked it as well, as he stated he would more than likely be keeping it when he moves cross country next month. Just in personal preference of game play, I'd say a 7/10 not mind blowing, but decent. I liked the art and the figurines, the chits, the insert for the game itself was really good.

We also played Broom Service, from my collection. It is strategy based, and mildly frustrating (like when people try to chain together a bunch of actions, and end up messing it up for themselves and the other player, not to point fingers, Nameless Roommate #1...)

You play the part of a witch, using your connections to move between territories and deliver magic potions. Each territory is a terrain type like Hill, Mountain, Plains, Forest. You have a hand of 10 friend cards. These friends allow you to move to another terrain type(witches), deliver potions in that terrain type(Druids), or gather resources to create potions(gatherer). All players simultaneously choose 4 friends and play them face down. The first player reveals the first friend they chose and declare if they will be Brave or Cowardly. The trickiest mechanic is that each friend has a Brave action and a Cowardly action.. The Brave action lets you do more/have higher benefits, but only one person can use the Brave action of a character. The Cowardly action is a bit more limited, but everyone who played that friend can use the cowardly action.

Where it gets complicated is at this point - If I am first player and I reveal my Hill Witch, the brave action is that I can move to an adjacent hill and deliver a potion to a tower. The cowardly action is that I can move to the adjacent hill. I choose to be a Cowardly Hill Witch. I move to the adjacent hill. Nameless Roommate #1 also chooses Cowardly Hill Witch, and since I revealed mine, he reveals his before the next friend is revealed.  we each take our action. No big deal.

However if I choose to be a Brave Hill Witch, before I can take my action, if he has chosen Hill Witch, he must reveal that He is also a Brave Hill Witch, and takes my chance to use the ability at all.  So it's a game of trying to predict where your opponent is going next and taking a chance that they aren't going to the same area as you.

Where this becomes an issue is when you assess that your opponent doesn't have any open Mountain areas that they can do anything in, so you choose Brace Mountain Witch, so you can go to the adjacent mountain and deliver a potion. But your opponent has decided that even though they dont get to go first, once it becomes their turn, they are going to try to chain together a Plains and then go to the Mountain two spots away. Twice in a row, even though you clearly are trying to go to the adjacent mountains. And they act put out because you threw their chain off, so now they can't really go to the mountain they were trying to get to.

Overall I really liked it, but the opponent's strategy stressed me out. He's a better strategist than I am, so he had to know I would be trying to get into the mountain, so he had to have been blocking me. But he got all flustered and didn't know what to do when mountain came up as early as it did. So either he was playing me, or he wasn't considering my move at all, which I highly doubt.

For a kids-themed game, there was another layer of weird  betrayal underneath it.  I'd give the game another solid 7/10.

We also player his copy of Sellswords, which is basically a mini game straight from  Final Fantasy. 8/10 - Quick, replayable, fun, tricksy. Consists of two rounds  with two parts each. First you lay out 12 heroes with special abilities and numbers on their each edge, you take turns collecting these heroes into your hand. Second part you lay the heroes out  on the board. Every time you place a hero next to another hero, you compare the numbers on the edge. If the defending hero is an enemy, and they have a lower number than the new card, they are flipped and become part of your army, and so on, until the end, when you count points by how many of your army is in each row.

The other was Lanterns The Harvest Festival from my collection, a tile laying, resource management game. 8/10, quick, replayable, fun. You draw three tiles and match colors, collect cards and buy honor. Pretty each to learn, and Fun, Kind of reminds me of Carcassonne, but Festive.