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 :)

Using the last of a roll!

I started a print, knowing the roll was low. I had a backup roll, by a different company, as my normal company was sold out of black PLA.I don't even know how much of a difference the same company would make, as I would imagine that the quality could change roll for roll.

However, my roll ran out with about 45 minutes left on my print (biting my nails about whether the ever shrinking roll would last.)

My Print, which is awaiting a write up of it's own because it's my first remix from a thingiverse project, wasn't too bad. You can tell where the second roll started(in case you are missing it, it is the left half inch, the texture, color and shininess are all a bit different. the lines are a bit more noticeable.

Calling it a night, Hope I have time tomorrow for a write up on my newest print project and my adventures in remixing!

Printer Scaping

So I started a print and noticed more rattling than normal (rattling is not normal, but I keep tools on the table so they jiggle and shake and clink.) I work from home for my 9-5 (or more like 2pm-11pm) and stop getting calls at 6pm, so I set my printer to print while I am working (it's in my general home office area.)

I started noticing the rattle and then noticed this screw poking out on the arm. Of course it is one of two screws holding the grooved belt in place - the one that allows the arm to move forward and back. Miraculously, there was no slippage on the print on that axis.

About half an hour later I hear another rattle/grindy sound and look at the print, a screw on the bed's belt has also come loose, but this time there was some definite slippage. I had to scrap the whole print and didn't have time to set up a new one, as I was actually working.

The moral of the story is to do bolt checks more often. The more printing you are doing, and especially high speed printing, the bits and bobs rattle loose. This print, I only lost 30-40 minutes, but I would have been mad if it had been a longer print. It was just an alternate train holder for Ticket To Ride, I have three of the other kind, so I just wanted to test it.

Here's a pic of the slippage. Kind of hard to tell with the black on black... but in the upper left corner, you can see the raft, and then the printed part starts. The shiny triangle on the left and the strings on the right are where the toothy belt failed for a bout 3/4 inch and the print shifted to the right.

TL;DR: PSA - Remember to just give a quick twist to your screws.

An exercise in rafts

Lately I've been having issues with my raft. I have had luck with a couple - they peel away from the main print easily and leave barely any stress marks. However more and more frequently I seem to be having issues with the raft sticking to the print.

Google has informed me that maybe I need to experiment with my raft settings. Probably the Airgap. Cura has two airgap settings, so that's not frustrating.. I think this issue stems from having a messy raft. Sometimes when pla is being melted it gets a little stringy or at the beginning the bed and extruder heat at different rates and the extruder ends up at full heat before the bed is ready to go. This means that a little plastic is melting out of the extruder, not too much but enough to leave strings or a clump. Before printing the z-axis lowers and touches the bed and then lift's a little and pulls. That is meant to grab whatever plastic has been oozing out of the extruder.

However it's not a perfect system and sometimes strands get stuck in the first layer of the print and then they get pulled around which causes the raft to be imperfect. When the raft is imperfect the first layer of the main print can get entangled with the plastic from the raft. I think this is what is causing the difficulty in separation of raft from print.

My experiments tonight have been printing some cases for the Trains in Ticket To Ride. I got the file from Thingiverse, thought I am not sure I will end up using this in my set. The lid doesnt seem to stay on properly, and I found some matchbox style alternatives I might use, but  for now it's good enough to test.

As you can see from the above pictures, I had some difficulty with the first layers of the print while using a larger airgap on the raft settings. the gray, gross result is actually because i cut most of the first layer off and then sanded it down. It looks 10x better, but still not even half as good as the second print with only a .15 gap.

I am printing again with the same airgap, but 90% initial layers instead of the 115% it was set at on the second print. I also adjusted the surface layer thickness from .2 to .5, so we'll see what this does!

Good thing I ordered another roll of black PLA
 

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.

Success! - Machi Koro

I printed a box organizer for Machi Koro designed by Kabong  on Thingiverse... It was Successful!


The raft settings were a little rough again, but it looks  decent! I may prime and paint it. 

It fits Machi Koro with Harbor and Millionaire's Row expansion. If you want to keep the neat inset (and I do) this box actually fits in one of the smaller boxes made for the expansions.

I'm going to keep it short. I have some other projects going that I can talk about this weekend, also it's board game day!

I will hopefully have more time to post tomorrow, but thought you guys would enjoy the Machi Koro insert! Isn't it such a perfect solution for the game?

Does that make me crazy? Maybe I'm crazy?. . . Probably.

At 8pm  last night I started a print that would prove that batching my pieces is smart. Of course the print would be just under 10 hours, which put the end time around 6am. This doesn't always make for the most restful sleep, but the process would be amazing if it worked.

The project is an insert for a new game Lanterns: the Harvest Festival designed by Tejawood. The current insert was cardboard and just had two slots to put everything, and required a couple plastic baggies....I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, but I have come to hate plastic baggies when it comes to sorting board game pieces - it adds so much time to set up and clean up times. The files i downloaded were set up so that all the pieces would print on my 6" bed. I decide - why not? might as well try to get them all printed at once.

The PROs of doing it this way are to save a bit of time and bed prep(time + materials) and to set up 4 pieces to print all at once. I would lose the most time between prints. I would have to peel the piece from the bed, make sure the bed is good to print again, and set up the new file in my printer. While it isnt a ton of time missed, i would have to be hovering around my printer, waiting to finish one print and start the next, that time would be lost while I slept. this way, i can set them all up and print all four pieces together

The major CON is that if it fails 4 hours in, I am out 4 half pieces, when I probably would have been able to print 1 or 2 fully completed pieces. I have tried batched before, and they usually fail, mostly due to print material or issues with the filament feed, or bed temperature. One by one I am trying to correct all the small issues I have, so a 9 hours batch print isn't that bad.. especially when I have completed long prints before.. its usually the batches that mess up though

This project actually worked! I woke up in the night and heard the printer finishing (the engines sound different because it lifts the extruder several millimeters and moves it to the home position for the x & y axis. I almost couldn't fall back asleep - i was like a kid at Christmas, wanting to check on how it turned out.

I noticed while it was laying the raft, that the filament was a little strange, and before I went to bed, I thought I noticed some peeling from the bed, but I am excited to announce that it actually printed and worked out! I had some issues with the raft removal, it was kind of loose for some reason and took some effort to remove. Good thing I have sandpaper!

I posted a couple pictures of the rough raft bottoms, but look at how great it looks in the lanterns box!

Now I just need to start designing my own inserts!