a box to keep my marbles in

this art piece operates on a literal and metaphorical level.

made out of spalted maple recycled from a game board.

6 years

6 years of hard work coming together at last

artwork

i've spent the last month creating artwork for a new solo game. this is the first time i've done such a sustained run of my own illustrating. quite pleased with the result - a mix of vector and textured image layers

now the hard part starts. building the mechanics

games

it has been a busy summer of boardgame design for me as my opportunities expand and i gain more experience. here are some highlights of two new games i've developed

one is about a walk in the woods, the other is about selling tea to the sons of the Sultan

Hyena

I was invited to be part of a new 2 artist gallery show in August. The theme this time is "Journey" and, while I will be making several more artist book oriented pieces, I always like to include some aspects of my woodworking.

This first piece is a sculptural form of the game Hyena which comes from Northern Africa. It is related to a much older game called Mehen from Egypt.

The basic rules to the game are as follows:


The playing area is traditionally marked on the ground, but may be drawn on paper. It has a sequence of many circles arranged in a spiral, each representing a camp and the end of a day's journey. The first circle at the outside of the spiral is larger and represents a village, and the final circle at the centre of the spiral represents a well at an oasis. Thus the objective of the game is to travel from the village to the well and then be the first player to return.
Each player has a piece, representing a mother. There is also a piece to represent the hyena. The pieces start at the village. The players move their pieces according to the roll of a die (traditionally pieces of stick were used).
A player must throw a six to get their mothers from the village onto the first circle. The player must also throw the exact number to reach the well; if the number they throw is higher than the number of days to the well they must try again on their next turn. Once they reach the well the mother washes her clothes until the player rolls a six again. Then the mother starts the return journey to the village.
The first player to get their mother back to the village (they do not need an exact throw) wins the game. For added entertainment, the winner is allowed to play the hyena. Again, a six must be thrown to release it from the village. The well must be reached by an exact throw and can only be left when a six is thrown. However the hyena moves at twice the speed of the mothers (double the score of the die), and any mothers that the hyena passes on the return journey are eaten and removed from the board.

I've decided to use dicing sticks instead of dice for the piece and work with a linear path. The path does have 30 spaces, corresponding to a month of journey time. As with most of my work there are underlying numbers and symbolic references. The whole board is meant to suggest a path with stands of reeds along the way. The final space is drilled completely through to the darker "earth" colored blocks and represents the well as the oasis.

Woods include: Lyptus, Walnut, Lacewood, Maple and Cocobolo. The piece is approximately 30" x 8" x 8"

I've made a set of pieces in maple and a set in cocobolo. I am undecided at this point about which to include. I still need to finish the Hyena piece too.

sunday

how i spent my sunday - painting very small miniatures with a small brush. continuing to get better at it though. needed these for a new solo RPG i found recently. click to embiggen

papercrafting

how i am spending my saturday

Irish Games

been a while since i posted something on the blog hasn't it. never much fun doing food posts in the winter because i cannot get good lighting for photos so i spend my time doing other things.

one of which is entering game contests. these are some photos for a 2 player card driven wargame (CDG) i am working on for an entry. this game is a little different in that as a wargame it has no hex map, no counters and uses no dice. oh and ... one player only has one warrior and the other side a whole army (well 6 warriors just to keep things simple). oh double and .... it uses a nomograph instead of look up tables for combat

i've based it on the Táin Bó Cúailnge myth from Ireland. In the story Cuchulain fights alone against the army of Queen Medb while his fellow Ulstermen are under an enchantment.

really pleased with how it is turning out. next up in the development is playtesting and rules writing

Parsec X - the Sequel

it was finally sunny enough to take photos of the game with my custom painted planets. Last photo in the series is of the retail edition of the game with the metal box to carry it all in. Quite happy to have found some nice solar dice just to complete the look

Parsec X planets

decided to create some custom planets for my copy of the game

a little spray paint, a little gloss urethane in a can and voila!

the spaceways of Parsec X

cards received from printerstudio for my 18 card 4X space game - Parsec X

 tokens made and eurocubes gathered. creating a few retail copies to sell and one for a prize contest giveaway though i still need to find a proper box for the games

the corridors of space await exploration, expansion, explotation, and extermination

4echs

a shot of a game currently under development

Parsec X

a 4X game of space exploration and combat needing only 18 cards

painting 2

getting better (proper brushes help)

painting

as a child i played dungeons and dragons and collected the metal miniature figures. we were very clumsy at painting them and relied on my mother do so some of the nice ones for us. i've always wanted to get better at the skill. i've watched a lot of youtube videos and read a lot of forums on how to do it.

this is my third attempt and i think i am making progress. everyone eventually paints a skeleton horde don't they?

Iunu

Iunu (pronounced Awanu - meaning Place of Pillars) is my latest card game. Card decks just arrived from Hong Kong and I am very pleased with the boldness of color and richness of the black on the cards.

The game is for 2-4 players and has an ancient Egyptian civilization building theme. The wooden counters on the left in the photo are for the 'de-luxor' edition.

This game really came together in about 20 minutes one night followed by playtesting to refine the design. I've been working a lot lately with minimal artwork in my designs and I like the effect here. The game looks ancient and modern at the same time.

As with all my games I do do research to make sure the thematic elements are correct.

Back to my current design project - Murano - a game about glass blowing on the island of Murano in the 17th century

Finishing Wizards

With some time on my hands I am finishing up crafting some game projects I've done re-designing on. This is Wizards, a venerable game from the early 80s with a positive theme of magical quests. It combines aspects of RPGs, wargames and boardgames.

Now to finally play it.

Conjuring Demons

as i continue to design my own games i am also pursuing my interest in the re-design of older games to understand how they were created and how they form the foundation to modern boardgames

this is a fantasy game masquerading as a wargame from the early 1980s by Jim Dunnigan. light on components, it was a fun game to work on and improve my digital mapmaking skills with.

Express Games

one fun thing to do to sharpen your game design skills is to design an Express/In a Tin version of a game. where you take a much loved and well played large game (often with a sprawling set of components) and squeeze it down to basically the size of a deck of cards, usually with a lot of dice.

the reasoning behind this is one of taking part an existing game to see how it works and then putting it back together in a smaller form, distilling it down to a bare bones essence

in this case 7 hours of intensive game design last weekend led me to create an express version of the game 7 Wonders. mine is called Space Marvels 6 Express and has a science fiction theme with a number of nods to some of my favorite authors and their books

TimeTripper

a quick re-design of an early wargame

tarot

i seem to have developed a burgeoning collection of tarot card decks. i am, in fact, collaborating on a deck of Raven cards as part of a film project (and more on that soon. we've been adding levels of metasymbolism to the cards and are almost done with the finished deck design)

anyways i needed a box to store them in and built one yesterday. i used up the rest of my supply of 100 yr old cherry, mostly because of the live edge (as seen on the inside of the box lid) 

it somehow seemed a fitting use for it.

plenty of room as well for some other decks i have my eye on

from a graphic design standpoint i've become fascinated by the tarot deck for its iconic language and how those major/minor suit icons are changed/altered by different designers.

this wood has some gorgeous figuration to it

i may add a leather strap inside to hold the box lid open at a 90deg angle