Print and Play Birthday

So in honor of this birthday for the best-wife-ever, I have decided to get off my lazy rump and finally post. As you can tell by now we are a little obsessed with gaming. So much so that I decided to craft a game for Katie's birthday. Now let me say this right up front.... Despite the plethora of craftiness on this blog I am not a crafty guy. C+ was the highest my penmanship score ever reach. And just between you and me I need my four-year-old's help with scissors.

My initial plan was some amazing new game involving Dinosaurs, Steampunk and Caylus.

The problem with this was three fold.

1. The only thing 'Amazing' about it was me calling it 'Amazing'

2. Crafting the truncheon wielding raptors was a little out of my wheelhouse.

3. Key actions cards involving anabolic steroids failed to fit my overworked theme.

Back to the drawing board I went. Deciding that actually getting her a game she might enjoy, caused me to just buy her a game. Thanks to a friendly co-worker going to GenCon I was able to secure a copy of ......(Wait that would be spoiling, Katie you will just have to find that gift later). But alas, I was still left with an empty hole where my Grinch-like craft heart should be. I decided to turn to my good old friend Mr.BoardGameGeek. And thankfully he offered up a delicious selection of Print-and-Play games both fun and reasonably buildable.

First I turned to Clint Herron's RoboDerby: Express. As a bonus I had a left over copy of Jurassic Park III that wasn't completely devoured by raptors, and a few other indented dice. This game turned out to be fun to build with lots of fan made extras, a variety of art, and it serves as a nice fast homage to one of my favorite games that takes too long to be fun: Roborally.

Image Courtesy sunshiny via BGG

But again I felt hollow because this is much more of a game for me than for Katie. Then I found it. Artfully detailed in his own blog Matt S. (tasajara) posts about his own Ticket to Ride expansion creation. Northern Egypt. You can read about his creation process here.

This was perfect. It is a game best-wife-ever loves. Most of the parts are from something we already have and the cards were already uploaded to Artscow. Now all I have to do is make the board. I could have just had a poster printed and laminated, but that would have been WAY too easy. I decided my best bet would be to print the game on 8.5 x 11 label sheets and stick them to a thrifted game board. The Jurassic Park board was the right size but it was only 4 fold and wouldn't fit in the Ticket to Ride box, Trivial Pursuit boards were a good option but I would have had to seem two together. Luckily I had a copy of the Ann Arbor Trivia game, and for some crazy reason I wasn't attached to it.

Next step was resizing the image. While it was close to the board size(good for scaling) it would have cut off the edge(bad for keeping score). So I used PosteRazor to resize it into a convenient PDF.

So one night when best-wife-ever was out doing her civic duty disposing of stockpiles of dangerously flammable ethanol, I set up my project. At this point I would like to thank my aforementioned daughter Lily who did her best to help me work the paper cutter. To her I say I did the best I could. After cutting and applying the sticker sheets I came to realize that the toner did not hold up as well as I would have liked. So in an effort to save the project I used a few markers and a couple coats of sealant to patch it up.

All in all it is a fairly impressive creation and I have to take my hat off to the creator who put a tremendous amount of time and fan love into the art and playtesting. If I were to make another one of these I would print on some high quality glossy paper and glue that down rather than use labels. I was pleased with my choice to get the Artscow cards. They may not be perfect but they are far nicer than you would make anywhere, plus cheap is good. For any poor soul that made it this far in this post, I thank you and ask you to join me in wishing best-wife-ever a Happy Birthday.