Origins Update: Goodbye, Mr. Fun Bus

Attention, attention! Only 29 days until Origins Game Fair commences! I am amazingly stoked for this year's marathon of gaming fun. My Board Room pass is all set (because you have to have access to that beautiful library of games), my Mayfair Room pass is all set (because it's just plain fun in there, and they have snacks!), and I'm about ready to rock.

I did get some interesting, if disturbing, news though today from the Origins Facebook page. It seems the beloved "Fun Bus" shuttle will not be running this year. In previous years, the Fun Bus was free bus transpo to all the major surrounding hotels and the convention center. It ran every 15 min. or so and kept on truckin' until 1:00am. I think some of the sweetest memories from last year are the 1:00 rides back to the hotel, packed elbow-to-elbow on the Fun Bus with people drunk from gaming. We'd all share our purchases of the day and recommend games to everyone else. Good times. But alas, we must say goodbye to Mr. Fun Bus. According to one source, the Fun Bus's sponsor, "Experience Columbus," faced budget cuts and decided to dump the shuttle.

As a result, my lazy ass has already switched my hotel reservations over to a facility with an enclosed walkway to the convention center. I had a lovely time staying at the Doubletree last year, and would recommend it to anybody, but it's a hike. And the Doubletree <snooty voice> "never provides any form of shuttle service for any events"</snooty voice>. Well then, ta-ta!

If you are lucky enough to attend Origins this year, it might be worth checking your transportation plans given the lack of shuttle...'cause, you know, your ass will be walking in the middle of a midnight thunderstorm if you decide to take your chances. That's what would happen to me, anyway.

By the way, don't ask why there's a Victorian era toddler crying over the Fun Bus above. It was just the creepiest crying baby picture I could find, and I had to have it. Besides, if creepy Victorian babies went to Origins, I'm sure they would cry over the loss of the Fun Bus, so it makes sense, right?

Building a Jenga Dice Tower

Let's start with the obvious question: What in tarnation is a Jenga dice tower? For those of you not in the know, a dice tower is any kind of small tower (usually made of cardboard or wood), in which you place dice in the top of the tower, and they roll out the bottom, effectively rolling the dice for you. Because, ya know, it's a lot of work to roll those dice. All those days playing Alien Frontiers or Risk, I've been thinking "Blast! If only there was some way--SOME WAY!--I could relieve this dice-rolling wrist stress and still have a perfectly random outcome." Well, a dice tower is the answer.

So granted, I rebuffed, rejected, and roundly mocked the idea of making (or worse, buying) a dice tower for a long time, but the greatest husband in the world persisted. Stubborn monkey. And thank goodness he did; It turns out that the function of a dice tower is to be just plain FUN! It's another cool useless gadget that makes people smile. So consider me pro-dice tower from here on out.

Now to get ourselves a dice tower, we turned to a particularly creative mind over at BGG: user BadgerWithAGun. He has posted a brilliantly created PDF mock-up of directions for building a cheap and awesome dice tower using Jenga blocks (view the plans HERE).Yes, Jenga--that game that no one plays anymore, and dumps off at every thrift shop in the world.

Here is the story of how we sat down last night and decided it was time to build our dice tower, and hopefully you'll see how fabulous and easy it is. Maybe you'll be making one of your own this weekend (If so, we want to see pictures! )

Step 1: Gather Your Dice Tower Materials

You'll need the following items to build your Jenga dice tower:

• 30 Jenga blocks (one complete game set comes with more than 30)
• Wood glue
• Foam board, or game board that you'd like to chop up
• 3 wooden clothespins
• Sharp scissors 
• Paper towel
• Felt (optional)

All of this is going to be uber cheap. Check at a couple thrift stores and garage sales, and you should be able to get a used Jenga set for about $1.00-4.00. A new bottle of wood glue cost us $3.00. Felt costs you pennies, and the rest we had on-hand. So the total cost of this dice tower, for us, was just over $5.00.

Step 2: Start Gluing Your Jenga Blocks

Per the instruction sheet, use the wood glue to start assembling pairs of Jenga blocks into "Ls", and then glue together the "Ls" (as shown in pics) to form 1 Jenga block x 1 Jenga block squares.

These will be the levels of your tower. In total, you will need 6 of these squares. Hold off on stacking them on attaching the squares to each other--it's not time to stack the tower just yet. (In the pic below, I've just stacked them to make sure they're all coming out even, I haven't attached the squares together yet.)

 

Tip: Make sure you keep a small sheet of paper towel on-hand, and keep wiping away excess glue before it dries. And remember, since the blocks are sitting on their sides, and will eventually be stacked on top of each other, "Jenga" logo orientation doesn't matter. 

Once you have all 6 of your Jenga block squares glued and dried, you're ready to move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Glue Together the Tower Base

Now it's time to assemble 6 Jenga blocks into a 2 block x 1 block rectangle. This is going to be your base, your tray that the dice roll out into. At this point in our building process, it was getting a little late at night, hence the goofy shadows in this picture above. There was glue everywhere, and the cats were campaigning to go to bed. But no one can thwart us when we decide to build a dice tower late at night! Good thing our wood glue dries really quickly, though.

Step 4: Cut Out Your Ramps and Base

Set aside your Jenga blocks for now, and pull out that foam board you set aside for this project. Or, if you're crazy like us, you can butcher an old game board for this purpose. We chose an old Stratego board whose pieces had long ago been discarded. Using the scissors, we cut out two identical pieces of the game board that are just wide enough to fit inside one of the Jenga squares, and just long enough to extend from the top edge of the blocks to the bottom edge, so as to form a ramp. You'll have to gauge the angle the best you can. 

You'll glue these in place, and then grab those wooden clothespins mentioned in the materials section. Snip off small little wooden bits of the clothespins to use as braces for the ramps to sit on. Above is what the underside looks like once it's all been cut, assembled, and glued. You'll need to make a total of 2 of these, and these will become Layer #1 (top layer of the tower), and Layer #3. 

For the final ramp, we cut a piece of game board big enough to create a ramp from the top of Layer #6 to the bottom of the dice tray (so it'll be almost twice as big as the other ramps, since it spans two layers). Here is a sneak peek at the diagram from the PDF instruction sheet over at BGG. 

Notice in this diagram that there's also a piece of game board that is cut to the size of the base and attached as the bottom of the dice tray. This is the step where you should go ahead and cut out this base piece and glue it to the bottom of the tray.

I'd have more personal pictures to show of this step, but this is where it started to get really late, and I started to get easily distracted playing with the cats or doing other important things while the greatest husband in the world (GHITW) did all of this part. Here's a pic of the final result. In the center is the base tray, with the bottom piece of the Stratego board attached underneath, and Layer #6 on top, with ramp in place.

Step 5: Assemble Your Tower!

Zzzzzz. Zzzzzz. Mememememe. Zzzzzzz. What? What's going on? Oh, that's right. I was off, um, not paying attention while GHITW fidgeted with the ramps for a needless amount of time. Okay, it was really only about 20 minutes, but it felt like a really long time.

But now it's time to BUILD THE TOWER! Yeaaa! Before you bust out the glue, practice stacking the layers together (staggering each layer so its block formation alternates), with ramps in proper place, facing the proper direction. Once you think you have it right, do some test rolls of the dice. Try a few different sizes of dice just to make sure everything's lined up and working right.

Once you're satisfied, apply a generous amount of glue in between the layers to stack your tower up. Be sure to wipe excess glue away with your paper towel.

Once it dries, you're ready to let the dice roll! That's all it takes. 

Now, some people find dice towers a little noisy, and suggest gluing in mats of felt on the ramps and the bottom tray. I don't know. The sound with the game board ramps and the Jenga blocks is kind of neat, I think--sort of a fun wooden tinkle that sounds like a steam punk wooden gadget (or so I imagine). We'll be skipping the felt.

After that, the tower is yours to decorate. Leave it plain, if that's your bag. I plan to do some elaborate sketching and painting all over this one (photos to come at a later date if it turns out well!). Or, you might want to just grab a can of spray paint and go to town.

The most important thing is to have fun with this contraption. I've heard stories of these towers being built double-sided so that a D&D Dungeon Master can choose which slot to drop the dice into--one so the dice rolls out to a tray facing the players, and one so the dice rolls out to a tray concealed behind the DM's screen. Brilliant. Unnecessary, maybe, but brilliant. Make this tower your own, make it interesting, make it unique, and add a little extra fun to your gaming experience

And don't forget to share those photos of your own dice tower!

Settlers of Catan Game at McDonald's?

If the world was a just and true place, this game would be real at a fast food restaurant near you. McDonald's, listen up, you need to dump that shabby game of yours. You know the one. The one where no one ever wins anything but a hashbrown, small coffee, or small french fries. After years of boredom and disappointment, I'd be happy if I never found another orange St. James Place sticker under the seats in my car.

Let's try this instead. Screw it if most people are too confused--that's just separating the wheat from the chaff. Let's start awarding prizes to people who actually like board games or know board games. And those of us who do, vote that Settlers would, indeed, be an excellent choice. Although...knowing my luck though, I'd just end up with a game sheet full of soldiers.



What other games are ripe for a McDonald's promotion? I'm thinking the Puerto Rico board game might be decent--not only do you have to collect that indigo and coffee, but you have to have colonists for them to count. Bohnanza's another prime candidate--just imagine having to buy a third bean field in order to win upper level prizes. Eh? Eh?

Anyway, I'd like to thank not only CollegeHumor.com for making this beauty of a dream video, but also BWE for bringing it to my attention today. It made a morning of parent-teacher conferences much more enjoyable. Sigh.

Early Adventures in Board Gaming, and Mom

Mother's Day yesterday just reminded me how much parents can really influence our hobbies and passions early in life. Today I am an avid board gamer, at least in part, due to my parents always holding "family fun nights" with snacks and Monopoly or Clue or jigsaw puzzles. My mom always understood the fundamental truth that board games can bridge age gaps, arguments, and can bring people together. We've played board games on holidays, we've played on road trips, and we even played board games in the hospital room when my mom had kidney stones, and later, breast cancer. Games connected us. This all came to me as I was sorting through old photos of me with my mom for a Facebook salute to the ol' bird (sorry, mom, that's not nice, I take it back). Here is one of the photos I found, and well, it just explains a lot.

My first board game, with my mom showing me the way. Early 1981.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there who like to share the simple pleasures of life and fun with their children.

Zooloretto Summary Card

Are you a fan of adorable furry things? Do you like games that make you go "Awww"? Do you miss the days of preschool lessons about baby animals? Then you probably are sitting in front of a Zooloretto board right now. I have yet to write a full review on the Spiel des Jahres winning game, because it just seemed too boring to even write about. Sorry, Zooloretto and its fans. I guess that's kind of harsh. I mean, I do like fuzzy things with cute faces. But sans expansions, Zooloretto is about as exciting to me as playing most children's games.

Okay, I'll be fair though and stipulate that it may be a fantastic gateway game to pull in non-gamers or even your children. Yes, "Z" has its purpose. And for those of you whom absolutely love this game--and there are many of you out there!--I have a (specially requested) treat for you. Here is an image of the Zooloretto money action summary card:

SUMMARY CARD - ZOOLORETTO:

Just in case you lost or damaged your copies, or need extras, here it is for your printing pleasure. Also handy for pasting to wood blocks or cardboard boxes if you choose to pimp Zzzzzzooloretto. Cheers to many happy (and accurate) plays.

But as a parting shot, I have to share a couple of comics from board2pieces.com that channel my "Z" feelings:

How to Remove Grease Pencil Marks from Board Games

Recently, I posted some instructions for removing packing tape from your board games. Most of the time we find the packing tape strangling games boxes that come from thrift purchases, especially Good Will and Salvation Army finds. Tape isn't the only bother from thrift purchases though--there's also the dreaded GREASE PENCIL! Aaaaaahhh!

Yes, the games may only cost $1 or $4, but they make us pay in other ways. So many resale shops will write prices in grease pencil on the box top. And if you're wondering about the odd digits they choose for the price? Apparently that's to make it tough for the rascals out there to smudge off parts of the price. I guess they've never heard of price stickers, but whatever.

The point is that I (along with my lovely assistant, Lily) have a very easy way to remove the grease pencil price fast as a flash, and without damaging the box at all.

1. I need you to go out to the store and buy one critical cleaning item: A Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Let's face it, y'all, you should own one anyway. That bitch can remove marks from walls and cabinets that nothing else can.

2. Now come home, and ignore the instructions on the Magic Eraser box. Do NOT wet the sponge.

Let me type that again: Do NOT wet the sponge--do it, and risk doing some real damage to the cardboard.

3. Use the dry Magic Eraser to gently rub away the markings. It should take mere seconds and almost no effort.

 

I've also attempted this method with pencil, crayon, and marker graffiti, and other assorted scuffs. The results have been mixed (sometimes 40 year-old marker glyph is there to stay, no matter what Mr. Clean has to say).

Combine this tip and the last post to pull tape safely from your game box, and you'll have a good-as-new game box straight from the thrift shop or garage sale. Happy bargain hunting.

How to Remove Packing Tape from Board Games

If you've ever purchased a secondhand game from a thrift store, then you've likely come across the box-killing beast that is packing tape. Many thrift stores will wrap and seal every game box in the sticky stuff to keep contents safe during processing and to keep (irritating, germy) hands from scattering pieces while on the shelf. It's a good policy in theory, but there are two big problems: First, you never know what you're getting inside that box. Missing pieces? Torn board? Marker doodlings? Or, in the case of my husband's most recent thrift find, 3 rolls of nickels, which more than paid for the game...a few times over.

The second problem, more to the point of this post, is tape removal. If you're a collector, or ever have a mind to resell the game, packing tape can be a disaster that mars and tears boxes irreversibly.

No worries though. We have a tried and true method for you that will get the tape off with little hassle, minimal risk to the game box, and without asking you to purchase obscure products. Here's what you do:

Materials:
Hair dryer

1. Remove any diffusers or other attachments that are connected to the blower end of your hair dryer. Now plug it in and set it to a warm setting (but not necessarily the hottest setting). Find the end of the packing tape on your box and do your best to carefully pry up a small corner of the tape with your fingernail.

2. Now turn on your hair dryer and run it back and forth over a small section of the packing tape. Start at the end where you peeled up the edge. Use your hand to gauge if you're holding the dryer close enough, if it's warm enough, and if you're moving it around enough.

3. Continue warming the same spot of tape for about 10-20 seconds. In that time, the tape should become loose and very easy to peel up. The whole idea is to warm the tape adhesive and get it melty enough that the tape loses its grip. You'll start to feel when this happens. If you're feeling resistance from the tape, don't pull or tug! Just let the dryer warm it a bit more until it's ready to peel gently.

4. Keep blow-drying the tape, moving across the tape strip and peeling it up as it loosens along the way. Remember to keep taut hold of the tape you've already pulled, lest it re-adhere itself!

If you've done everything correctly, the tape should leave no marks or tears, save for the edges perhaps. In my many tests of this procedure, I found that box edges were the most vulnerable, and even with careful work I'd leave a little edge wear now and then. Oops! Rest assured though that this method is aces and will work great for your board games.

I'd like to thank my assistant Lily for all of her help with this post. It turns out it's not so easy to hold a blow dryer, peel tape, and take a photograph. So some of the above photography (and one of the ones below) was taken by my daughter lugging my giant Nikon around. She also did a nice job of wielding the hair dryer here and there.

Thanks, Lily!