Pretentious Board Games

Here is the promised Kickstarter campaign. I am sort of tempted to contact the people that support me first and preprint their things (so that I can ship most of the counters that are printed the day that I get funded). I think that that would go over well :).

After talking with my coworkers about the new Jurassic World movie I had a dream about a new game. It is 'Jurassic Universe'. Basically the players try to build themepark space habitations that have balanced ecosystems (full of dinosaurs obviously, since the people all like seeing dinosaurs) and attract lots of tourists. I am not quite sure of the winning condition, but I think that the game could be fun to make. Probably I am going to be drawing some space dinosaurs soon. Also, I am making a Kickstarter campaign for the twist counters that I have been 3d printing recently (pictured to the right). I hope to launch it this week, so hopefully that goes well. I will post here when the campaign goes live to keep you all  updated.

This week we had a meeting of the Sandy Utah Board Game Designers group. We played some Moar Moai, some Polynesia, and a game that Ryan Laukat started making (it was named something like 'Tale of the Swords'). It was lighter than most of his games that he has made so far, and Alison and I both liked it a great deal more than his previous games (we like light strategy games, so it was closer to us as an audience.) The game seemed pretty much like a redwall adventure/strategy game. You get a race of sentient furry/slimy animals and go around gathering mystic swords and other artifacts and then you destroy 'monsters' with them (where monster is defined as a predator animal). We actually finished an entire game of it (which has never happened in the game night time frame that we set up.) When he finishes this game I am looking forward to the kickstarter. I picked cats (figuring that I'd be playing as feisty tom cats, but they ended up being fat lazy lap cats), Aliso...

I tried to 3d print a twist counter (like this  failed kickstarted campaign that I bought into). My second attempt is below: It doesn't yet twist, but when it does the STL files are free for the taking. I am using tinkercad to edit the file. Here is the link to the file.

After some 3d printing, painting, and working on boards I showed my games off at a talent show. It was fun and people seemed to be impressed with them. This upcoming Wednesday we are meeting at the Barnes and Nobles for game playtesting. A link is here . Join us if you are interested.

I went went halfsies with my brother in law on a RigidBot 3D printer. We built it yesterday and I fooled around printing for a few hours. The first few prints were pretty rough, but I think I am getting the hang of it. The full sized ones are 1 inch tall. The leftmost one was the first 'successful' print, and the second one is an average print. The next two are printed 63% of the normal size and the upper right one shows that if I set the extruder too hot there are consequences. the lower right one is 50% size. I think that I'll go with the 63%, as they seem to fit on my MOAR MOAI board best. The sale that we bought the printer on ends at noon. Get yours fast.

Though I haven't yet got my cards back, a few things of interest have been happening recently, so I thought I would post. I played Acquire for the first time. It was really great. I intend on playing it again. It is exciting to find an old game that is still really fun. I drew a new map for MOAR MOAI. I tried to combine the score tracks with the resource tracks for the first time. I think that it looks awful. For this reason I talked with Dave about drawing me a better map. He has some good ideas, and I like his art style, so I am looking forward to his product. I set up a new game night for the Sandy board game playtesting group. It is next Wednesday. We are meeting at the Barnes and Noble near fort union, so come if you can. I also found out that my Uncle is an artist . I like his artwork style, and I could see hiring him in the future.