Bling Your Boardgames
When one has far too much stuff added to a board game for it to still fit into its box, what should one do?
- Remove some of those add-ons,
- Get a game-agnostic box like a Whatsitsbrand Card Vault or whatever,
- Add some card risers to the box base so the lid now fits higher up and you have more room, or
- Design and have made a fancy-ass new custom game box?
Hint - it's the last one.
Rugrat and I - Rugrat being the wretched champion games fiend of Scoreboards fame - were suffering with a Wingspan Asia box that we had rapidly outgrown as we added more birds to our two-player Wingspan set. Picture two delicate souls, awash in misery over this terrible conundrum. We um and ah about how to address this problem in an effective and economical manner. We discuss options and what we most want from a better Wingspan Asia box. We lament that Pijin, our voice of moderation and sense, is away for a couple of months and we are left to our own, chaotic devices.
Next thing you know, we have a custom box designed and on order from a one-off-print-job-friendly manufacturer/printshop (makeboardgames.com).
We have Birbageddon.
Pijin has regretted leaving us to fall so deeply into madness ever since.
Especially since then we took it a step further and started in on making little card organiser/holding boxes and snazzy, thematically appropriate little snap-close pouches for the little tokens and coins, and got some upgraded tokens...
The message here is, having tried it out and enjoyed the resulting set-up and playing experience, I thoroughly recommend you bling your board games. It's fun and engaging craftwork but also you get to enjoy that craftwork every time you play the game and it makes the game more fun in a way, and certainly easier and quicker to set-up and put away as you can ensure everything is well organised but also convenient for how you use it. I.e., we made a large drawstring bag for our Wingspan Duet end of round goal tiles so that we can use the pouch as a shake-and-blind-draw bag, but the pouch for the eggs just needed to fit neatly in the box and hold the eggs so it's a little flex-frame snap pouch that is more space-efficient, less faff, quick to empty or fill whilst still holding everything securely. Effective design makes for enhanced gameplay!
It's also a great excuse to track down all sorts of thematically appropriate fabrics and nifty craft doohickeys and knickknacks. But that's not the point, the fabric shopping is just an added bonus. Honest.
What these pictures can't show you is the 20+ new End of Round Goal (ERG) tiles we added. Some to sub in for base game ERGs that we felt would still work with Duet, and then others to add more variety and challenge to the game or adjust the balancing a little, plus some silly parody ones like 'most birds not on Rugrats' board' which has 'most birds not on my board' as the flip side.
We've got some more ERGs to design and have made, plus some more bird cards, a few bonus cards to make... Just as soon as I get the time to throw the images together and can order it all. Birbageddon doesn't stop here, the birb brains are too brainless for that!
Case in point: we pimped our Wyrmspan set out too. No sense, no restraint, no reason. That's us.
More Geekup Bits for food, same as Wingspan - satisfyingly clink-y to handle; more card boxes and some little tray-style boxes for the cave cards and ERG tiles; more bags including some sized specifically to suit the box space available; even the fancy metal coins that Stonemaier sell; plus the Wyrmspan Academy expansion, that's in there too. Of course.
We're in the middle of also adding boxes and bags to Tokaido, and will probably start in on things like folding dice trays and bits trays or some 3D printed trays for all our games to hold the various foods and coins during play.
This sort of personalisation is honestly a really fun way to add some variety and convenience to your games, and a more satisfying sort of thing to craft too, because it's something you can then use and enjoy afterwards.
It's been great to finally have a worthwhile use for some of my themed pattern fabrics, I've learned a lot about making drawstring and flex-frame bags, and also brushed up on my graphics design skills.
I'm a fucking pro at taking assets out of pdfs, I'll tell you that for nothing. Gotta get those wingspan and food symbols from somewhere!
And I very much appreciate that Stonemaier don't flatten and secure their pdfs, and even hand out templates so that I could do all of that. Being able to customise your gameplay experience with the proper imagery and matchign card backs etc. etc. is a little bit magical. I wish every board/video game publisher and the like let you have a sort of fan creation kit to work with!
Sadly, I do not yet own any more board games in need of bling, so I can't say there'll be more to post here any time soon but look out for more sewing and maybe some fibrecraft projects eventually.
And more Wingspan additions! The birbs must fly on!
Chatter