Red November | Image | BoardGameGeek

William Collins

(willco)

United States
San Diego
California

This is my double size board for the game, for the reasons mentioned in the description.

If anyone is interested in how to make one, I'll make a geek list. This one was a trial run, but it came out fairly well; it is certainly usable for game night, at any rate, and I learned an awful lot about making folding boards, with which I had no prior experience.

It is at least as sturdy as the original board and folds in half right down the middle where the 'wear' is. The wear is actually from ColtsFan's hi res image which I used to make this board. If you like this, give his image a thumb's up, it's two images back to the left.

Oh yeah, it doesn't fit into the box yuk

Edited Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:18 pm
Posted Sat Feb 14, 2009 1:39 am
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James Cartwright

(Rindel)

England

Looks good, I'd be interested in how you made it.

Posted Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:13 am
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William Collins

(willco)

United States
San Diego
California

Rindel wrote:

Looks good, I'd be interested in how you made it.

James, thanks for the interest. I might make this a geeklist or an article, but here's the short of it:

Things you'll need:
Illustration Board (from any art supply store...one full size sheet will yield several boards, and the sheet costs $5-10 American)
Metal ruler with a cutting edge
Exacto knife and fresh blades (or your razor sharp cutting tool of choice)
Self-healing cutting mat (or something else to cut on)
Computer and printer with some sort of imaging software and some decent quality paper; it's especially helpful if said software can print larger images as tiles, like Adobe Illustrator.
Clear Contact paper from Target or the like. $5 American
Illustration Tape or some sort of book binding cloth tape. The best is the black cloth tape for binding. It needs to be pretty wide, at least a full inch.
Super 77 or other spray adhesive.

First, you need to get the image that you want for the board. I used ColtsFan76's, but I could have scanned my own board. Manipulate this high resolution image in the imaging software by doubling it's size to 28x14 inches. Adjust the color saturation and clean it up any way you like; I did very little manipulation because I wanted this quick and dirty but you could clean everything up by dustbusting, replacing the text with your own, redefining things and generally enhancing the image by getting rid of any imperfections.

Next you will want to print things out and test your tiling and how the image looks. I was able to save the image as a jpeg and use Illustrator to print it in tiles; be careful here as it took me a second print run to get the settings right. I got mine to print on six landscape pages. You can use regular bright white paper for this, or you could use cardstock if you want it a little meatier. The illustration board is plenty meaty, though. Alternatively, you could bring your file to the local copiers and have them print it out in large format. A good quality large format may be prohibitively expensive; you'll just have to shop around if this is your only option.

Next you need to cut the illustration board to size. I would recommend going a little larger than the size of the tiles once assembled, maybe adding a half inch to each dimension, making it 28.5 x 14.5 inches. Use the cutting edge and be careful; my edge and cutting board were not long enough and I had to do the lengthwise cut in two parts. Now that you have the board cut out, decide if you want it to fold or not. If not, move past this next part. If you want the board to fold, cut the board in half, widthwise. With the boards placed back together, use your cloth tape (or illustration tape if you have nothing else; also, I suppose you could use thin strips of the contact paper for this part, too) to tape the top of the pieces together, right down the middle. Trim the edges and run your fingers over the tape (or use a bone) to make sure it's adhered as well as you can. Now fold the board together so that the untaped side is exposed to you, and use another piece of tape to tape the bottom of the board back together, making sure to keep the board folded while you do it. You can rest the ends of the board on your table so that the exposed crack is upwards, or you can simply hold the untaped sides over the end of the table to make this easy. You want to apply the tape down the middle, over the exposed parts of the board, making sure it adheres to the cut parts, then “pull” the tape and adhere to the bottom of the board. Now this part of the tape should fold inside the crack when you open the board to lay it flat.

Once you have things printing out correctly, and you are satisfied with the output, trim the tiles and tape them down on your illustration board. You may want to attach the tiles with a full spray of adhesive before cutting the board, as the tiles are difficult to get down correctly. Just be careful at this stage because you have six tiles that need to meet up properly or the board won't look right. Given that, don't be too afraid to put the tiles down...it might not be perfect, but it should look okay. I clearly messed mine up pretty badly, and it's still okay. If you really mess up, you can print out another tile or two, right?

Once the tiles are down, you want to get your contact paper ready. Hopefully you have a roll that is as wide as your board...the only ones I saw for sale at Target and WalMart were at least that big. If not, you can do two pieces, it'll just me a bit more effort. I cut the piece off the roll first. Then I peeled back just the very first part of the paper and applied it, with some over hang on all three sides. Then I slowly peeled back small parts of the paper, applying carefully as I went. You don't want to do too much at a time or you run a higher risk of those damned bubbles, which are tough to get out. You can't really go backwards here; the adhesive on the paper will pull up parts of your graphics if you do. Also, I didn't check my piece of contact paper for any sort of marring, and it turned out that it did have some pretty substantial markings; it was the first piece off the roll and must have been heavily damaged while at the store or in transit. The first few inches of my board, resultantly, have some pretty bad looking areas...you can avoid this by simply looking at it before you apply it; I wish I had. Once you have applied the whole piece, cut the corners off the tape, at 45 degrees, just barely touching the corner of the illustration board underneath; this will allow you to fold the tape over the sides of your board without any overlapping. Trust me, you want to do this step as it takes very little time and makes the board much, much nicer. Now just flip the board over and apply the sides, one at at time, to first the edge of the board, and then stretch the contact paper over and onto the back of your board and secure them.

Now you are pretty much done and you can flip the board back over and use a bone or your fingers to make sure that the contact paper is down flat and get rid of those little bubbles. If you have any particularly stubborn ones that you weren't able to work out before applying the paper to the back of the board, you can use your exacto knife to make a very small puncture in the bubble, which should give you enough wiggle room to get the contact paper to lay flatter.

Once I had my equipment all together, this took me about an hour, including the printing and trimming. I could have taken much, much longer and really paid attention to the details and it would have come out looking much more professional. The point is that you can do this quick and dirty, if you want to, and it will still come out very nicely, or you can spend lots more time and have something that looks more professional. I couldn't justify the extra time, so I went quick and dirty; I am a creative director and I am very critical of my work, and I still think that the end quality is acceptable, given the time I spent. Having said that, I am looking forward to using what I learned for my next board. Any ideas?

Edited Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:19 pm
Posted Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:13 pm
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James Cartwright

(Rindel)

England

Thanks for the info, I'll give it a go when I get a chance.

Posted Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:00 pm
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James Cartwright

(Rindel)

England

I think, with what you had and the time you spent It came out fine. It's alot better than anything I'd attempt without some help, which you've now given

The only other game I play at the moment with a board like Red November is Condotierre, I might apply your info here and try it on that one.

Posted Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:04 pm
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William Collins

(willco)

United States
San Diego
California

Rindel wrote:

I think, with what you had and the time you spent It came out fine. It's alot better than anything I'd attempt without some help, which you've now given

The only other game I play at the moment with a board like Red November is Condotierre, I might apply your info here and try it on that one.

Thanks, James. That's very nice of you to say. I think you will surprise yourself when you try it.

Posted Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:56 pm
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Jonan Jello

(Hex_Enduction_Hour)

United States
the enclave Newark
California

Cedar Waxwing & Western Scrub Jay

Well done, Wilco!

Posted Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:55 pm
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William Collins

(willco)

United States
San Diego
California

Hex_Enduction_Hour wrote:

Well done, Wilco!

Thanks, Hex! It's really wonderful to hear what everyone thinks, positive or negative.

Posted Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:05 am
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Randolph Bookman

(shieldwolf)

United States
Los Angeles
California

WILCO
Nicely done!!!
This is the one FFG game that I thought could have used a bigger board, but I like I can travel with it. Your custom board solves both problems. Excellent job.

Posted Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:58 am
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William Collins

(willco)

United States
San Diego
California

shieldwolf wrote:

WILCO
Nicely done!!!
This is the one FFG game that I thought could have used a bigger board, but I like I can travel with it. Your custom board solves both problems. Excellent job.

Thank you ever so kindly, Randy! I like that I still have the little version, too.

Posted Wed Feb 18, 2009 3:15 am
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Vesa Teräs

(Finsteel)

Finland
Orimattila

willco wrote:

This is my double size board for the game, for the reasons mentioned in the description.

In fact it's not double size but quadruple size

Very well done anyway!

-F-

Posted Wed Feb 18, 2009 6:38 pm
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William Collins

(willco)

United States
San Diego
California

Finsteel wrote:

In fact it's not double size but quadruple size

Very well done anyway!

-F-

That is certainly true, and thanks for the compliment!

Posted Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:08 am
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David Carter

(taffyslim)

Australia
wollongong

top job but iam a bit to lazy.i might just photocopy to a3 or a4 and laminate it.

Posted Wed May 20, 2009 3:15 pm
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William Collins

(willco)

United States
San Diego
California

I'd love to see a pic if you do that!

Posted Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:28 pm
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Will

(Yargo)

United States
Fresno
California

willco wrote:

This is my double size board for the game

If you doubled the dimensions each way, thats actually 4 times the area

Posted Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:31 am
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Jason Knepper

(Tenofwar)

United States
Tampa
Florida

Looks great! I sympathize on the cramped feeling of the board, so this is definitely a must for my collection. Thanks for laying the ground work and posting your DIY method.

Posted Mon Aug 23, 2010 11:12 pm
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