Pimp My Game: Turning Substandard Game Pieces Into Star Performers
Chris Tannhauser
United States
San Diego
California
Callisto 1 Mission Log, Day 3,125: I swear to god, if Logan does that spoon tapping thing again I will use it to dig his other eye out of his head. Also, the toilets stopped working sometime last month. Probably should've mentioned that first.
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I am an unrepentant bit-whore. Nothing tears my psychic shower curtain worse than opening a new game and finding a panoply of Cracker Jack prizes instead of manly game pieces. Flimsy cards, bad art on thin cardboard counters, ‘gold’ pieces that are orange, or worse, balsa-wood-colored. ‘King’ markers that are practically ethereal--I mean, c’mon--he’s the KING for chrissakes! He should be waving around a three-foot hunk of liver-perforating STEEL!
Luckily, I have just enough artistic hubris to get into trouble, and a job that leaves me with far too much free time for my own good. Add to that just a smidgen of anal retentive tendency and you have a guy who will not hesitate to throw on his purple-plumed velvet hat and aquarium platform shoes and get those lazy-ass games to walk the right track.
I’m not talking about adding glass beads to Runebound, or an honest-to-god five-star-quality hotel desk bell to Pit (though I’ve done both). I’m talking about Public Works projects that require money, manpower, and embarrassing amounts of time.
These are the games that I have whipped into shape, obsessively, monomaniacally, and in some cases for double the cost of the original...
Add you own stories of perfect obsession!
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26.
Board Game: Goa
[Average Rating:7.76 Overall Rank:30]
Michael Campbell
United States
Excelsior
MN
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Here's another one of my pimp jobs.
Goa desperately needs a turn tracker. So I made one.
Helen Holzgrafe has actually improved on my idea and added a column for the auction phase. She just recently uploaded her version in the files section...I recommend using hers over mine.
I have to say I got the biggest kick out of seeing a photo of someone's game table on a sunny day in Sweden and there was my turn tracker in the midst of a game of Goa.
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Mark C
United States
Ypsilanti
Michigan
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When I got Keythedral I was very impressed with the quality of the bits with one problem: the "iron" cubes were white, while the stone cubes were black. It's an oddity that's especially confusing because all the resource cube colors match the board tiles they come from *except* stone, which is white on the map, but has a black cube. So I ask myself, why in the heck aren't the iron cubes black, and the stone white? Then I think, heck just a little paint and I'm set...except, the seats in the Keythedral also are color-coded, and would need to be painted. This took a little more effort, but I'm glad I did it. I also added some colored flecks to the purple cubes (stained glass) and associated Keythedral seats, since they are often mistaken for the red cubes (wine) which are very similar in shade & color. Not what I'd consider a highly professional job, but it beats the original and makes me special [blushes]
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Jesse Morrow
United States
Unspecified
Massachusetts
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Well, on first play we became totally addicted to this game.
The problem? the Coins are awful.
So, we used the Sacagewa dollars, quarters and pennies. Well, there is problem number two. We were real broke one week.
"How we gonna get beer?"
"Well, theres like 40 bucks in Serenissima"
So now I need to get more coins, I got Hatian 5 gourde pieces to replaces the dollars -- Next time my cousin goes to Paraguay on business he's gonna get me 50 guaranie pcs for the quarters and I guess we'll use pennies.
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Isley
United States
Lawrence
Kansas
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I remember when I was in gradeschool and one of my orcs swords broke off at the hand. In a moment of brilliance I glued it to a Firmir's upraised hand and had a new awesome piece!!! Beat that one!
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S fessey
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
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Grr... Steve Jackson's bits (oo-er) always drive me insane - such poor production. It even got me riled enough to make my own board and pieces for this wondrously silly 2 player game. Not, perhaps, a work of art but it is nice to feel those 3D Snits between your fingers...
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Mark Wilder
United States
Evanston
Illinois
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I love Entdecker thanks to Mark Johnson's "All About" show on his awesome Board Games To Go podcast. To pimp it out a little, I use a ship from Pirates of the Spanish Main as the exploration ship, and instead of the little cardboard coins, I use replica "pirate" coins (silver two reale and gold four escudo) which I ordered from deadmentellnotales.com. The coins, of course, can be used for a bunch of games, including Puerto Rico, Louis XIV, or any other games that have two demoninations of coins.
The ships:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/10653
The coins:
http://www.deadmentellnotales.com/page/DM/PROD/C/C41as
The podcast:
http://www.boardgamestogo.com
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Richard Walter
United States
San Jose
California
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When TTR came out, there was some complaints about the smaller sized cards wearing out, bending, and generally being mutilated after a relatively short lifespan.
Determined to not let this happen to *my* cards, I made a set of tiles out of wood and painted symbols in 8 colors. They are about the size of scrabble tiles. When we play, we put all the tiles into a cloth bag and pull from that.
(And if someone can explain to me how to get a picture into a geeklist, I'll upload a picture of them.)
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hooper ecks
United States
Georgia
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I know a fair chunk of the Race Day crowd have been "pimping' their games by using Photoshop to create new cars, whether for drivers who weren't included in the game, or extra cars to replace boring variants (i.e., new paint schemes for existing rides)
www.rdfiles.net has a ton of these. There's even a gold-colored car, for those of you who insist on such things.
-hx
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William Payne
United States
houston
Texas
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I rebult my Battlemist game awhile back. The game comes with round counters for units, and if thats wasnt bad enough they didnt even provide you with enough of them.
I went on photoshop and created 5 custom heros for each race. When a player buys a hero he may choose wich one to bring into the game. Only 3 can be on the board at one time and when one dies its gone for good. I also created a battle board cause the battles have a tactical feel to them and when you have alot of units, it helps to move them to the battleboard.
I used plastic from various sources for the units.
I also did the same thing for my Thunder's edge game.
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King of the Dead
United States
Portland
Oregon
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Here's my custom set up for Nexus Ops. There is a ring around the tiles so they can't move, the monolith is wider and shorter and it has a fence so pieces don't fall off
the little areas for your reserves and the two banks.
It goes well with my double roll (two sides) dice tower with spaces for the mission, special mission and energize cards.
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Steve Cates
United States
Visalia
California
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I decided to pimp my BattleLore game for road trips too. So, I made this magnetic travel version with Magnetic units that point an arrow toward the unit strength on the board and the dice go in the clear cylinder.
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Simon Hunt
United Kingdom
Manchester
Downloading at 56 Kbps. Reading at 0.2 Kbps
OGRE 6e at last!
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Great List, Chris! You're clearly a man after my own heart. Only more so.
Here is a pimp-in-progress of an old Metagaming Microgame Ram Speed (Micro History 2). The original game is the usual Microgame fare - horrid map (too small for the actual counters!) with a gruesome roman coin motif across the middle, horrid 2D card counters, horrid box. Horrid, horrid, horrid.
Pimps:
I designed some micro paper minis using the original counter art as a guide and the excellent "Inkscape" Open Source .svg program ( http://inkscape.org). They were cut out with sharp scissors, scored with a reversed craft knife and stuck with Pritt Stick (I tried all sorts of fancy alternatives with craft scalpels and other glues but this seemed to give the best results). I could probably do with mounting the bases properly, but for 80gsm they're already quite sturdy.
I used the box art pictures from BGG to make up a Casette box inslip (a local bargain bookstore was selling "Hear'say" video casettes 12 for £1, so I dumped the casettes and am now using the boxes for games).
EXCEL97 for a ship designer that prints out (very) mini ship record sheets.
EXCEL97 again for the Combat Tables Summary (laminated)
The roman dice are stolen from IACTVS.
The board was a bit problematic - I found (in a file in my parents' garage) some 1980s original 16mm hex paper from The Games Workshop, which seems to be what the counters were originally printed for and laminated it. Obviously blue would've been better, but I don't have the printing resources right now for anything fancy. Besides the age of the paper gives it a certain Je ne sais quoi - it looks a bit like parchment.
And I really don't have time for this  ...
... but I love it!
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Mike Kollross
Canada
Carvel
Alberta
Pew pew pew!!!
I'm a member of the Game Artisans of Canada
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The cardboard tiles are greatly improved with a little help from Hirst Arts.
www.castlemolds.com
20 Hours later and about $200 in materials. The molds can be used for other projects and while the first board costs $200, the second is about $25. Still takes 20 hours+ to build.
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Pat Wells
United States
Lemon Grove
California
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This great game uses miniatures of the ships and aircraft of World War II to recreate any and all naval actions. The down side is that the "terrain" for the game are shorelines and islands. The "Islands" are flat card stock representations that block line of sight IF that line crosses the outline of the island. I decided since the ships are 3D, the terrain must be 3D as well. I built the island from scrap styrofoam and model flock. The sea surrounding the island is made from an old CD case.
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Greg Low
United States
Mansfield
Massachusetts
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Whether the Marker-lined country borders on transparency film, the plexiglass cover over the board to write orders on, or the metallic conference map with magnetic units, my version is built to heavier specs.
It's not just for show. It is much easier to teach the game when you can draw all the moves on the board and resolve them one at a time, explaining the steps. Your novice players will understand the game like pros by fall 1902. You better make your move early.
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Chris Tannhauser
United States
San Diego
California
Callisto 1 Mission Log, Day 3,125: I swear to god, if Logan does that spoon tapping thing again I will use it to dig his other eye out of his head. Also, the toilets stopped working sometime last month. Probably should've mentioned that first.
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While there is something to be said for the Spartan purity of prosecuting the Cold War with simple squares of cardboard, nothing says WE WILL BURY YOU like weighted Staunton chess pieces.
I found a super-cheap plastic chess set at a local toy store (after hitting thrift stores all week with no luck?! What gives? Isn't a chess set the obligatory father-son forced-play purchase after baseball gloves? Jeez...).
The pieces were ugly as all hell, and very 'Hollywood'--bristling with flash and hollow.
I cleaned them up, filled each one with spackle and a big, heavy screw, busted out the spray paint and got busy:
(WARNING: BEER PLUS SPRAY PAINT FUMES WILL MAKE YOU BELIEVE... CRAZY THINGS.)
VP marker - king - 'beaten gunmetal' color
Turn marker - queen - gunmetal
DEFCON marker - rook - gunmetal
Military Ops markers - knights - glossy red & blue, respectively
Space Race markers - pawns - red & blue, as above
I then finished them each with a fuzzy pad under the base.
The effect is incredible--it makes the entire world into a massive chessboard. It's appropriate to the theme, visually arresting, pleasing to the touch, and highly functional.
PS. For the Action Round marker I took an extra leader block from Commands and Colors: Ancients, printed up a white star on a blue field and a yellow hammer 'n sickle on a red field (both blown up to make the symbols slightly larger than the block for graphic effect), sprayed the block gunmetal color and pasted the symbols on either side. The end result is a stand-up marker that you can rotate to show who the phasing player is.
PPS. I mounted all the Event reminder chits on Scrabble pieces, which ended up being kinda pointless as you can just lay the card next to the board as a reminder. [shrug]
PPS. For the DEFCON 'no coup, etc.' indicators I use nice yellow poker chips (11.5 g) with big black 'n yeller radiation hazard symbols pasted on 'em. If you stack them on the DEFCON 1 space (nuclear war) and pull them off as required, then nuclear war is revealed (and chillingly possible) when the gunmetal rook reaches DEFCON 2. Silly, I know--but it's a neat effect.
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Jason Maxwell
United States
Arvada
Colorado
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Just a minor fix, I got some gold stickers and applied them to one end of the cylinders that mark the 4 stations that the passenger is trying to reach. That way if its an express station you use the gold end, a regular station the other end.
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Daniel Danzer
Germany
Stuttgart
southwest
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I got the pieces with one of these half-transparent plastic-"boards". Folded and thin, and never real flat - in China you only see those.
I got a hardboard, carved the lines in, filled them with oilpaint, made the fortresses and river in nice colours. I turned the pieces around and carved icons in them, filled with oilpaint, so my son (and I) can play it more easily. Lot of work, but quite a difference. 
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Daniel Danzer
Germany
Stuttgart
southwest
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I was not satisfied with the look of this game at all. Ships and no wood? Treasures and only coins - where to store them?! I made me a "pimped" copy and gave the original away as a gift - so, no remorse.
1. The board has to be a board.
2. Ships have to be of wood. Store the treasures better on them, so they can not fall down:
3. Add a treasure chest (to store all worthy stuff in the beginning), some Islands with extinct volcanoes, get some real treasury (ring = 1, golden pot = 5, diamond = 10) plus a coloured "Jolly Roger", so everybody can easily see your colour ...
... and your kids will have even more fun playing this -
 !!!
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Bernard Donohue
United States
Newark
California
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I decided that the cardboard tile cards just didn't quite cut it. So I've been working on modding some matchbox cars and mounting them on plex. The yellow truck is my first effort.
I haven't uploaded a pic of the second car to BGG yet, but you can see it here:
The weapons are stripped off of Mechwarrior: The Dark Age mechs & vehicles.
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46.
Board Game: Genoa
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:158]
Neuro Gamer
United States
Grand Prairie
Texas
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Lots of games have a marker to indentify who each player is in a game.
Saint Petersburg and Alhambra come to mind.
So I felt the need for each player of my copy of Traders of Genoa to have his/hers Family Coat of Arms to be placed in front of them.
Is that such a bad thing?
Gg
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Chris Tannhauser
United States
San Diego
California
Callisto 1 Mission Log, Day 3,125: I swear to god, if Logan does that spoon tapping thing again I will use it to dig his other eye out of his head. Also, the toilets stopped working sometime last month. Probably should've mentioned that first.
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While this expansion rocks, my son & I found ourselves constantly getting tired of two things: trying to remember if we said we were travelling by day or night, and having to look up the story effects off of the movement die roll...
1) "Day--no, night!"
This one was easy. Headed out to the The Known Universe's ClipArt Repository (the Internet) and downloaded a picture of some random desert. Printed it out and glued it to a Blood Wars card, then jammed it into a black card sleeve. Now you just flip it and it remains as a sad, sad reminder that, indeed, you said you were travelling by night... sucker.
2) "I got sideways-E, wiggly lines, wiggly lines. Pretty exciting, huh?"
When you have a story encounter (or whatever the heck it's called) you're supposed to roll a movement die and match each individual symbol (there can be up to three) with a chart in the rules. Not so hot. This one was not so easy. I made li'l mini scrolls with each possible outcome of the six faces of the movement die/chart team-up, printed them out and dolled 'em up to make 'em more 'scrolly', then mounted them on a spare die I found under the sofa or some such thing. Now when you roll for story time, it's really story time--you can read the li'l sentence that tells you what happens. Dramatically. Please use your 'radio announcer' voice.
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Chris Tannhauser
United States
San Diego
California
Callisto 1 Mission Log, Day 3,125: I swear to god, if Logan does that spoon tapping thing again I will use it to dig his other eye out of his head. Also, the toilets stopped working sometime last month. Probably should've mentioned that first.
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This one isn't so much about upgrading a poorly performing component, but the addition of a much needed one. A constant mantra during this game is, "Which color are you again?" Each player has a cardboard figure (nice enough) and a colored disk. Problem is, they're both on the board with no way of knowing who's who. This isn't a problem with three or so players, but the minute you get out to six it become both important and nigh impossible to know who to screw and who to avoid.
I mocked up some colored markers with pictures to make it a simple thing to say, "I'll screw blue--and that's you!"
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Chris Tannhauser
United States
San Diego
California
Callisto 1 Mission Log, Day 3,125: I swear to god, if Logan does that spoon tapping thing again I will use it to dig his other eye out of his head. Also, the toilets stopped working sometime last month. Probably should've mentioned that first.
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Another FF game missing some useful pieces--'stepping out' markers for when a player declines to continue card drafting/bidding. Two problems arise from a lack of these parts: it's easy to forget who's stepped out, and you constantly have to check how many have stepped out to know how many time tokens the next decliner gets.
Stacking these poker chips low number to high solves both problems nicely. It's clear how many tokens the next person out will get (the number printed on the top chip) and everyone who's stepped out has a chip in front of them for all to see.
You are now free to concentrate on the debauchery.
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Martin
United States
Bainbridge Island
Washington
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I'm always replacing counters with little representative items. This is my all-time favorite. "The fate of the planet hangs in the balance."
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and B: (before anyone else says it) can afford it! Mine cost about £25 in plaster (stone) and the cost of the molds. They`re expensive but EXCELLENT.
Mesa
Arizona
Chicago
Illinois
Dane,
In my house, we usually stick things to the refrigerator with magnets. However, they're always slipping and falling off. I believe I will use your variant with nails in the future.
Plymouth
Devon
Yes, have a crown for king. I may be organising a gaming session for the first time in years, with non-gamers, and I really need to think about what can give things the right kind of atmosphere, and turn something from a game into an event.
Bainbridge Island
Washington
Many people have mentioned they have beefed up their counter thickness by adding more cardboard. I like to use a self-adhesive floor tile. They cost about 70 cents at Home Depot. You just lay the counter sheet on the tile, then add a sheet of clear laminate to the counter front, making a counter sandwhich, then cut with regular scissors. The feel of the tile is nicer than cardboard and the vinyl counters last forever...well I first did it about 19 years ago with paper version of Awful Green Things, and it is still in great shape.
Alameda
California
So I like not only quality pieces, but to have them well organized. Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to start a game, but having to sort through endless pieces. And good games help you out by giving you plastic bags, but those bags have a tendency to break down, especially with as much as I play. So for that tried and true game of Settlers, I personally hand knit game piece bags. One for each color with each expansion. That means 18 bags, 3 each in the 6 colors. I also knit a bag for the random game pieces, plus one more for the fish expansion to house the fish. That was a total of 20 bags. But that wasn't good enough actually. I knit into the bags the patterns for the knights, ships, settlements, fish, and dice so you could tell which bag went with which expansion. And since the colors match,you can easily tell what pieces go where. This took me about a year to finish, but it is pretty awesome. Very geek chic. As soon as I figure out how to post pictures, I will.