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Happy 2026!!!

If you’ve read last year’s page through, you know that there was no big Christmas game haul this year as Selena and her fiancé moved into their own house and Julie’s interest has shifted a little…

It’s really great news overall… Julie has been having more ups than downs health-wise which I’m very grateful for… her weight is down in preparation of having both knees replaced and she’s also found a renewed interest in her crafting and reconnected with some local crafting buddies (one an former classmate)… I’m very happy for her as I always hated the thought of her being stuck at home all day, in pain and doing nothing but resting and tending to the dogs while I was at work… she’s even been selling a lot of her items online and plans to attend craft fairs when her health allows…

To support her ventures, most of her Christmas presents were geared towards the shows and teaching her some of the same lessons that I’ve learned from packing, moving and lifting drums over the past 5 decades…

Towards that end, I got her 2 folding Vevor wagons…

8 of the Iris 12 gallon heavy duty totes…

And an assortment of free standing pegboards as the ones I saw her moving around were comprised of 8 metal peg boards zip tied together… they’re unwieldy and heavy and sharp so I’m hoping these will replace those and that everything – including the large, molded folding table she takes – will fit in the two wagons.

Among other things, I topped it off with her own JBL Flip bluetooth speaker as she always liked mine and this will come in handy when she’s crafting or working around the house AND for playing some tunes when she does attend craft shows… 🙂

For now, most of my gaming will probably be with the local game group and my friend Dave who I’ve turned into a gamer over the past few years… 🙂

January 1… Happy New Year!!

Relaxing day off from work… after I was up at 2:00am to pickup my good friend Dave and his wife at 3:00am and drop them off at Albany International… had a couple inches of snow overnight with the squalls that were blowing through… roads weren’t bad… unless they’d been plowed and left the icy road behind… roads were pretty much just wet below Saratoga until we hit another squall coming through a couple exits before the airport but overall, an easy trip…

Heading back I noticed the wind had picked up a lot… snow was blowing and drifting and I hoped it wouldn’t affect their flight… otherwise the roads were good until about exit 16 coming north but I made it home without issue.

The weather and extreme cold have bothered Julie’s knees and the dogs had taken over my side of the bed so I crashed in my computer chair and watched some videos… nodded off a couple times then had some breakfast and let Julie and the dogs rest… 🙂

It was a great day to do nothing… I fed the dogs later in the morning while Julie let them out the side door… she trusts them loose and they get to run a little while I always have them on a leash… after lunch I hooked them up and took them out front… it gives them a change and another chance to play a little…

Are you bored yet?? FINALLY – some gaming to report!!

Mid-afternoon I checked on Julie who was up and crafting and she asked if I wanted to play a game!! When I came to (after a brief feint), I asked her which game she was thinking… I knew which one I wanted to play after looking forward to playing it for the past two Christmases and not having it… ‘Santa’s Workshop Deluxe 2nd Edition‘ !!

I’d been watching videos since I got word that it was shipping… I read the manual and started typing my teach / refresh notes Christmas Eve day in case she felt like playing something Christmas Eve but that sadly didn’t happen… the more I watched and read and typed, the more I knew we’d love it and started thinking this must be the best Christmas game out there!!

Julie came into the game room and saw that I had it mostly setup and I could tell it wasn’t what she expected but she sat down and patiently listened as I went through all the areas of the workshop…

This game is ‘dripping with theme’ as they say… each player has a team of elves working in the various areas of the workshop… from the Reindeer Stables to the Mailroom with all the letters from Santa with the toys you have to build… to the Coal Mine which is the games currency (and for the kids on the Naughty List)… to the Material Locations where you swap coal for the fabric, wood and metal necessary to build the toys, etc…

The game takes place over the 9 days before Christmas and every 3 days Santa comes through and does an inspection to see which team of elves has the most Christmas Cheer (who completed the most toys and hung the most ornaments on the workshop’s tree)… in the end, the team that has the most points (most cheer), joins Santa on an after-Christmas vacation someplace warm and sunny… the artwork is amazing and the gameplay, while having a lot going on compared to what I was anticipating, was fun and thinky (there is a basic set of rules and its own game board on the opposite side of the main board)…

When we finished, I had barely edged out Julie but we both loved the game!! I’ll probably fight the urge to play it again for now and tuck it on a shelf for next Christmas but, if I have my way, this will be our new Christmas Eve tradition… yes – the game is that good!!

Julie originally really had something else in mind and I promised to play that next… it’s a couples game that I think she got me for my birthday called ‘Honey – Answer Me This‘… so she took the dogs out while I finished packing Santa’s Workshop and read the rules for this new one…

‘Honey – Answer Me This‘ reminds me of the old ‘Newlyweds’ game show back in the 70’s except for 2 players… simple concept… take turns drawing and reading a card out loud… you both write down what you think the other will say… if the person who DIDN’T draw the card matches the answer of the person who did, they score 1 point… first one to 10 points wins. We had some fun with it though I wasn’t surprised that it isn’t even listed on Board Game Geeks website… 🙂

January 4… broke Mom out for a quick lunch (too cold for her to go shopping), returned home and finished all my chores (garbage and recycling emptied and containers by the road… repaired the handle on the shed door)… on the way home, a thought hit me… one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard and we experienced with ‘Santa’s Workshop Deluxe 2nd Edition‘ was how hard it was to tell 2 of the 3 wooden elf meeples apart (the 3rd has one arm in the air)… if you look very closely, you can see that one is a little, let’s say, ‘fatter’ than the other… if you have the Deluxe set, they’re screen printed and, again, if you look very closely, you’ll see that the ‘fatter’ one has 3 buttons while the other only has 2… this helps with the meeples but player boards only have tiny silhouettes of each meeple… so I made printable vinyl stickers for each elf space on the player board… they came out great but the silver elf is still hard to see… otherwise I was very pleased with the results and will post them on the BGG website as soon as I’ve finalized everything.

January 23… Julie had her first knee replacement last Monday (1/19) and is doing great!! There’s pain of course but she’s getting lots of rest and doing her exercises when awake and routinely walks the length of the house and back… she uses a walker when we go to PT but we’ve been reorganizing our living room into her crafting area, etc. and it’s impossible to navigate most places with a walker so she’s been using two canes and has had no issues getting to the bathroom on her own and even getting the dogs out in the middle of the night (of course I’m up and walking with her)… the hardest part has been getting the dogs – who love to lay on both of us – to understand that they can’t be on her lap just yet… they’ve been wonderful… 🙂

Game wise, I’d already been going through games with solo modes so I’d have something to do as I’ve stayed home with her all week… unfortunately, I’ve been exhausted from lack of sleep – mostly from the dogs taking over my side of our giant bed…

Tonight she was moving and fairly coherent (her meds tend to make her drowsy or loopy… or both) and I was still awake and had just started a solo play of Draft & Write Records when she came in and asked to play… I’d finished my refresher / tech notes earlier in the day so I was ready for her… and she kicked my ass by almost 50 points!! I must say that she’s a terrible student when I’m trying to teach a game and easily frustrated, but I’ve said it before, once she gets it, it gets quiet and she’s usually piling up the points… 🙂

It was great to get to spend some awake time with her and to get a game in. It was the first time she’s sat in a chair here at home since the surgery and she did well with it though struggled a little to get up – probably due to the chair height… maybe I can get her to test the new chair height and play again as long as she’s sitting there… 🙂

February 16… Julie and her new knee are doing fantastic!! No walker or canes and PT says she’s way ahead of where most people would be which I give her all the credit for… she’s been doing the exercises on her own regularly and using the cold water circulating knee wrap which she says feels great…

I’ve been playing a lot of SOLO Grand Austria Hotel and just finally beat one of the easier levels… by 1 point… she’s asked to play a game a couple times – usually right as I’m making supper… I can tell when she’s tired and tell her ‘we’ll see how you’re doing after you eat and take meds’… usually she’s asleep… but not tonight!!

I still had Grand Austria Hotel on the table but packed… the dogs were fed and had to go out so she took them while I setup… while this was probably the last game we played (before Draft & Write Records a few weeks age) but it didn’t look familiar and she didn’t remember it… I went through my refresh notes and when we started playing, it started coming back to her… as usual, I would watch her turn and make suggestions to make sure she remembered all her options and didn’t miss anything… this translates into my focusing more on her turns than my own but I don’t mind… by the end, she was putting together some killer turns while I was sitting there with a stupid expression on face trying to figure out how to get cake and coffee that all my guests required without the necessary dice coming up the entire game…

It still felt good not to be playing solo… until she beat me – this time by more than 100 points!! Even that isn’t what bothers me most… what really gets to me is that after she soundly thrashes me, she starts packing and heads for bed without giving me a chance at redemption… 🙂

February 19… I’ve made an unexpected purchase and am not sure where the most appropriate place on this website to tell about it might be… I’m putting it in with my gaming because that’s what brought me to it and what I’ll probably use it for most (until Julie figures it out and starts doing craft projects)… 🙂

260 x 260 x 260 mm³ Print Volume which I learned was pretty good sized… it was fast and efficient and upgradable… the more content I watched the more content appeared and all but a couple naysayers were totally blown away – some after weeks of testing…

It regularly sells for only $400… given the prices I’ve seen for other models I was worried about the quality at such a low price point but, after weeks of my own research, I was convinced that this was more than worth the $279 sale price so today I pulled the trigger on the 3-D printer and 4 rolls of filament… I think I have a stable place to set it up if my plans are right… I’ve only told Julie that I got us something for our birthdays… it’s slated to ship the 3rd week of March… 🙂

Back to gaming…

After I got home from work and taking Mom shopping and a quick bite, Julie surprised me by asking to play Grand Austria Hotel again…

We had everything setup again in no time and were playing but this time the game felt different…

Neither of us – but especially Julie – were getting guests into rooms and racking up points… we both ran out of money and got pigeon-holed into needing goods for guests that we couldn’t get… after totally annihilating me last game (by over 100 points) she was sure I was going to reverse that tonight… she was right but only by 6 points and my winning score was only in the 20’s…

In the very beginning of the game, you get to select and add a guest to your cafe for free… AND you get to choose 6 Staff cards to keep from 10 that are dealt to each player… AND you get to prepare 3 rooms for guests – all before the game even starts which gives you a little sense of direction… but there are so many things that can derail the best laid plans… dice rolls that determine which actions are available and their power… guest card draws, etc… while the game provides various avenues to mitigate when things don’t necessarily go your way, throw in how tight money can be and it’s quite the fun and challenging puzzle to tackle

February 20… Julie wanted to play Grand Austria Hotel again tonight!! I know – I’m shocked too… 🙂

Tonight we threw in the Unique Hotels module from Grand Austria Hotel: Let’s Waltz expansion… it’s pretty simple to throw in (if you pick some of the less complicated ones)… adds an entrance to each of our hotels with different startup conditions for each player and a unique player power for the entire game…

This game, the dice and cards were working more in my favor and my hired staff was working out great for me… in the end, I won in a rout 131-63. Julie insisted that we leave it setup for another game tomorrow… 🙂

February 21… I don’t know if I mentioned previously that Julie and I are going to be GRANDPARENTS!! We’re very excited for Selena and Mike but Selena is having really bad (what I think qualifies as) morning sickness – only hers is lasting all day… 🙁

We were supposed to have 2-4 inches of snow but I already tried to clean up 6-8 inches of heavy wet snow right before supper and without a snowblower (in its 4th week at the repair shop)… my brother’s electric shovel couldn’t move any of it… I shoveled the decks and the end of the driveway and hoped the storm was done but by morning there was another 3-4 inches… I firmly believe ‘Meteorologist’ is Latin for LIAR!!

I started shoveling everything again and as I walked around this seemed a little fluffier so I broke out the electric shovel again and, with the slushy bottom layer now frozen, it was thankfully able to move snow – except the end of the driveway which was still too wet and too heavy and had to be shoveled by hand…

I had cleaned out the area by our back door where Selena used to park with the electric shovel so when Julie asked if she could hit the bank and grab coffee, I thought I would just move the van around and back it into the clear space for her – thinking she’d be able to drive it straight out to the street… instead, I proceeded to get the van totally stuck not once but 3 times!! I had to shovel it out and get it rocking back and forth to get it rolling before getting stuck again and again… eventually I got it in the clear area and could see where the van was bottoming out… the snow was still wet enough under the weight of the van to sink down, hang up and just spin the tires… I was about half done when I decided to take a breather and have some breakfast…

Back out in the cold with a second set of clothes and muscling the electric shovel through 10+ inches of snow in some spots… about 2 and a half hours later it was done!! The only thing left was to shovel out in front of the mailbox which was piled over 2 feet high… sorry mailman – another time… I’m wiped out…

Julie was able to get out now and run her errands and decided to surprise Selena with a visit… she was feeling absolutely rotten and happy to see her mommy… 🙂

I figured that, by the time Julie returned, she’d be taking her meds and heading for bed and she did crash for a while, but not long after I finished supper, she was up and wanted to play Grand Austria Hotel again… I could barely move from the day’s snow removal and braces on my elbow, both wrists and a back wrap around rib height because all the shoveling – even with the electric – puts a serious hurt on the muscles around my shoulder blades… but I don’t think I’d ever turn down a chance to play a game… 🙂

Same setup as last night with the added Unique Hotels module… we were both doing well and the score was close with multiple lead changes but in the end, I was able to eek out a victory by only a handful of points. We are loving this game!! 🙂

February 22… Selena was feeling a little better and she and Mike were out for a ride and called to take Julie to Golden Corral (I’d already eaten)… I figured by the time she got back she’d be ready for meds and bed so I’d packed all our games from the past few days… of course she wanted to play Grand Austria Hotel again and if I hadn’t already packed, I would have been up for it… I told her it was back on the shelf so she let me pick something else… I knew I couldn’t go wrong if I picked her favorite – Carcassonne!! I have to tell the story of how this came to be… apologies if you’ve already ready this back on my 2012-2013 page…

I spent days reading and re-reading the rules trying to wrap my head around the gameplay which today feels like child’s play to all of us… The first play started slow… our version included the River expansion that Wil plays with in the Tabletop video and, just like he said, we soon got the hang of it.

Once we’d played all the tiles which triggers the end of the game, we set about figuring out and completing the scoring with Selena narrowly edging out Julie and myself. I looked at them and (bravely) asked, “What do you think?”  They looked at each then looked at me (I know now they were just torturing me), and immediately wanted to play again!! To this day I’m proud (and relieved) to say that it is one of my wife’s favorite games…

Which brings us back to tonight…

We played with the River expansion (which is now part of the base game) and the Inns and Cathedrals expansion which increase the value of roads and completed cities… it was like kicking back with an old friend we hadn’t seen for a while… no rules explanation was necessary (though we did need a quick refresh of what the Inns and Cathedrals did) and we banged through a full game in about an hour… about mid-game I completed a huge city with a cathedral which scored me 45 points and let me lap Julie on the score track!! I had only put out a single farmer on the 4th turn of the game (farmers are placed laying down in a field and can’t be removed for the rest of the game) and this farmer paid off big time as I pulled away with 200+ points – beating Julie by over 100 points!! If I didn’t have to get up early for work, I’d have gladly played again… another time… 🙂

March 6… Windmill Valley Blooming Sails arrived today… it mostly merges with the original – a few pieces are replaced from the base game… after sorting and bagging, I was able to get everything in the original box… barely… now I can’t wait to try it but am convinced I won’t play without it!!

March 13… I’ve been working on my combined rules teach and refresh document for Windmill Valley w/ Blooming Sails… I keep taking a break then going back to it because the game isn’t that difficult – even with everything in play – yet I know I’m overcomplicating my notes for fear of forgetting something…

In between, I’ve been thinking about what game(s) I’d be willing to bring and teach to a local game convention in May… then a thought struck me… why not do ‘A Day at the Races’ and bring some fun games like Ready Set Bet and Camel Up…

Then I stumbled on currently popular title in stock and ordered Hot Streak!!

At the start of the game, set up the racing deck with one card for each mascot and a number of random cards based on the player count. Reveal these cards to all players, after which players draft a betting ticket from those on display, then in reverse order draft a second bet. For each bet, you can play it safe — or flip it to the risky side, which might pay out more – or cost you money if you lose. After betting, each player chooses one of three cards in their hand to secretly add to the racing deck.

Shuffle the deck, burn three cards, then reveal cards one by one from the deck, moving the mascots along the track, with them sometimes swerving into another lane and knocking over another racer, sometimes turning around, sometimes all moving at once, and sometimes just going backwards! If a racer runs off the track or would be knocked over while already fallen, they’re disqualified. If needed, shuffle all cards in the deck, burn three cards again, and keep racing until all four spots on the box podium are filled. Pay out bets based on these results.

For races #2-3, first deal each player a random card from the deck, then place bets again, then have each player contribute a card from their hand to the deck. After race #3, everyone tallies their money.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): I’ve seen this talked about by several creators and when I started thinking about the convention, it seemed like a good one to include… 🙂

It arrived today (March 13th) and I started running through the rules and watching video while I had supper – all in hopes of trying it out with Julie before bed time… thankfully, as I was finishing supper, she asked about playing Camel Up but was surprised to see Hot Streak setup… we played 2 or 3 games before switching to Camel Up before calling it a night…

If I can get the timing worked out for the teach and gameplay of each, I think this would make for a fun day at Adirondicon on May 16, 2026!!

March 15… OK – I guess I’m going all in with the racing theme and ordered an old classic that just got a new production and that’s Magical Athlete!!

Before the racing begins, players will draft the four racers they will have in the game and choose before each race which to use. Races alternate between the “mild” side of the board and the “wild” side of the board. A race ends once two racers have crossed the finish line — with, generally, only these two players receiving points.

Why (we wanted it / like it (or don’t): Given how much Julie and I enjoyed Hot Streak and Camel Up a couple nights ago, I thought this would be a great addition to the collection as well as my convention lineup…

March 23… tonight Julie and I were jumping around YouTube videos before going to sleep and I pulled up a new expansion for Wingspan out of curiosity (we haven’t played the original in years now)…

March 24… I had to place an Amazon order for Mom and found the Americas Expansion and got it ordered…

Oh – and our Anycubic Kobra X 4 color 3-D printer arrived yesterday!! I say ‘our’ because I’ve been passing it off as a birthday present to myself and my wife Julie and hadn’t even told her what was coming until today… I wasn’t sure whether she’d be interested in it at all… I’ve been fiddling with technology for about 40 years and working in the tech field for maybe 30 but even I was a little intimidated by this new adventure…

Several content creators recommended placing a patio block under the printer for stability and noise reduction so I had to get that in just the right place but first I needed to know how much clearance I needed front and back for the bed movement (they call this a ‘bed slinger’)… I got everything in place (you can see the patio block in the picture above), fired it up and went through their initial setup and calibration routine which took about 45 minutes altogether…

After sorting out the Wi-Fi and the app and the Slicer program on my desktop, I finally figured out how to get things to print… it’s not like the old ink-jet (or dot matrix) printer mentality where you connect a cable, load drivers and start printing but, once I got my mindset adjusted, it works great!!

By the time Julie returned I was just about to send common test print… I tweaked no settings – I just loaded a filament and printed to see what kind of result I might get…

It estimated print time at 1 hour and 17 minutes but I think it finished in about 45 minutes and was virtually flawless!! An amazing result for not having much of a clue as to what I was doing…

As for Julie’s interest?? After Panera they ventured to Hobby Lobby and she came back with two more rolls of filament and plans to get some more colors tomorrow… I guess she’s all in… hope she’ll let me use occasionally… 🙂

March 26… after some initial software growing pains which were totally my old-man-stuck-in-old-tech-ways fault, I figured out how to get my designs from software A into software B then how to get that info to actually print… this is all very surface level stuff and I’m sure in time I’ll be deep in the minutia of details and tricks and settings and designing projects from scratch and all…

I should probably explain what brought me to this point…

A while back I was playing a game of Dragonkeepers and wished I had a better way to hold the two decks of cards… and the stacks of amulet pieces were always falling over and requiring attention… I found a couple free solutions online and asked our elementary tech teacher at school if she could run them off for me… she did and they are amazing!! I can’t thank her enough!! They really clean up the table during play and are a fantastic upgrade.

Below is a picture from Wil’s video where you can see the player’s dark blue route tiles and ships and the raided dragon tiles… as much as I wanted mine to look like that, I haven’t done any wood working since high school Wood Shop class and was sure I’d ruin the original game tiles if I even attempted it…

12 years later my (dimly lit) light bulb went off in my head and I was sure they could be 3-D printed!! I reached out to our tech lady at school (who never ceases to amaze me with the tech things she does with her students) and asked if I could bother her with another project… we did a couple test prints but I was struggling to get the measurements just right… and I would need 10 of them altogether… while she insisted that this wouldn’t be a problem, at the time, I had just watched my first video on the Anycubic Kobra X and was considering a purchase… you already know what happened there.. because I didn’t want to keep bothering the nice tech lady of course… 🙂

Somewhere during this process I realized that – after removing the cardboard insert to accommodate the additional size – I didn’t want everything rattling around the box loose so I started looking for a suitable insert to print… WAIT!! I could design my own!!

I measured and set about my first major design project and thought I was doing pretty good… depths… rounded finger shells to get a finger in to remove pieces… I thought it was ready and started the 13+ hour print job after supper (so it would be finished before I left for work around 5:00am the next morning)…

It came out fantastic!! Probably added a half pound to the weight of the box and contents!! And if an intruder got in our house, I could easily render him unconscious or lob of a limb with this thing… it would definitely stop a knife and maybe even a bullet… and any square corners were razor sharp!! But did the pieces fit?? Of course not… the area for my new dragon tiles would only fit 6 of the 10… and the 8 ship holders I’d built in lacked about maybe 1/16th of an inch of fitting side-to-side… back to the drawing board… IF I decided to commit that much filament to another attempt… I was mildly disappointed but this is part of the learning process…

April 2… I’ve got the slicer software sorted out and can now routinely print from my desktop computer… time to turn my focus to design software…

Tinkercad was fine for the very basic projects I started with but it seems a little lacking when I tried to design a full blown box insert… I realize that part of this is my lack of knowledge and experience and there are adjustments to be made in the production end as well (like in the slicer)… 🙂

April 5… Selena was over to hang out before Easter dinner and wanted to see the 3D printer in action… earlier in the day I printed a hose adapter for my Shop Vac (which didn’t have a small end which I needed when cleaning the van)… came out perfect!! Now if it ever stops raining and snowing I’ll test it out… 🙂

Selena loves Highland cows so we scoured the internet looking for files and found one that would print in an hour… we watched almost the entire process… she thought it was very cool and it still fascinates me… 🙂

After dinner (while everyone else crashed), I waited for Spectrum to arrive (yes – on Easter)… a month or so ago our Internet started dropping multiple times each day – requiring their modem to be reset each time… their tech said it must be the modem so I drove to the nearest Spectrum store and swapped out the modem but not before getting talked into a 1 month trial of their Xumi box and a 1 year trail of their Premium Internet tier for $20 less than I was already paying…

I got home and swapped out the modem and everything seemed fine for a couple weeks (though slower than before) – then the drops started again… I called and got a robot tech who reset the modem remotely (the same as I’d been doing manually) and it was good for a couple hours…

A couple days ago I was home and it dropped 4 times before lunch!! This time I called and mashed buttons until I got a live person… he tried tests, had me unplug it and plug it back in so he could watch on his end but could see nothing happening – even when it came back online and was working again… he scheduled a tech working on Easter to pay us a visit… I rearranged the room so we could get to the modem and router in anticipation of his tech call…

Lewis arrived… very nice man… he told me he wanted to check things outside before checking the modem… everything at the end of the house was good and he even went up the pole and signal there was also good… then he came inside…

He said it’s odd but he’s seeing signal drop inside… we waited and waited for my Asus router to finish connecting but it never did… multiple reboots of everything and still nothing… I pulled up my router’s web page and there was no IP address but it showed an error that my ‘ISP’s DHCP isn’t functioning correctly’…

He asked if there was a splitter… I didn’t remember one and the jack and cables were all behind my board game collection… we traced the cables and started pulling games off the shelf… he was pulling the cable at the modem end but the wall end wasn’t even twitching – there was something in between… sure enough… we got enough games out of the way and he could feel it and eventually get to it… there WAS a splitter… one that the last Spectrum tech had put in for some reason and only capped one side so it was leaking signal like crazy… Lewis told me that, after Spectrum’s recent upgrades, these were all supposed to be removed!! They don’t use them anymore!! That ‘recent upgrade’ was right before my other modem started dropping… it all makes sense now… with the splitter removed, my router quickly connected and all was once again right with the world… I thanked him for his patience and persistence and for coming out on a holiday.

Remember my 1/2 pound game box insert that didn’t quite workout?? Before I went to bed, I decided to print my redesigned game insert for Tsuro of the Seas with whatever filament I had the most of… with the blocks I’d printed now attached to the dragons (Elmer’s plastic / crafting gel glue), they sort of fit nicely in the area I had designed for them BUT they had to be standing up in which case the box lid didn’t fit… laying down, I could only get 6 in that space… and the 8 ships lacked a 1/16th of an inch of fitting… I took the opportunity to work in Tinkercad again (before moving to more serious CAD software) and had everything resized and rearranged to accommodate the 10 blocks laying down and fit the ships… I also learned that I should adjust the ‘infill’ setting when printing larger items… this adjusts the amount of filament used for creating the solid parts… I checked everything, knocked the infill down to about half of the original setting and let her rip!!

April 6… I jumped out of bed to get ready for work but excited to see how version 10 (my second printed version) of the insert came out… it was perfect… well, almost… the only issue I had was, once again, the slots for the ships… the ships DID now fit in the slots BUT the slots were a hair too shallow leaving the tiny flags atop the masts sticking above the rest of the insert which means, when the board is inserted, it would crush them all… 🙁 I considered trying to use a Dremel to lower the bottoms but I was certain I’d make a mess of that… then late last night it occurred to me that drilling a hole as to allow the ship to be placed in the slot upside down might do the trick… that’s the plan for tomorrow night… tonight I had a special game night to attend…

A good friend reached out to me a few years ago and asked me to be the co-executor of his will… we’ve been playing games together occasionally but tonight person from out of state working on this with me would be there so we could finally meet in person… I was told to pack some games and became both nervous and excited at the prospect of the meeting and selecting games having been told only that they ‘play games’…

I ran through my collection in my head over and over and over… I’d sit and stare at my wall and 3 other shelves of games… I’d pick a couple then I’d think of others that might work… as the time to leave grew close, I must have packed and unpacked my game bag a dozen times – finally choosing: Ticket To Ride, Dragonkeepers, Anomia: Party Edition and Tsuro of the Seas… I picked games that went to 5 players in case my friend’s wife joined us (usually she prefers letting us play while she enjoys her tablet and TV shows)…

We all sat and chatted for about 10 minutes before moving to the dining room table where I placed all the games on the table to see if anything caught their eye… my co-executor’s husband loves trains so we setup Ticket To Ride!!

I hadn’t done my refresh and tech notes for this and hadn’t played in some time (though I did watch a quick video while eating supper)… once all the pieces were out, I challenged my memory to pull out a quick teach… my friend’s wife was planning on just watching but they convinced her to join in… a quick review and we jumped in…

My friend and their guests jumped on the board early claiming some single and double train routes while my friend’s wife and I were collecting cards and lagging behind… I was the first to claim a couple large route – a 5 train and a 6 train would score me 10 and 15 points… I continued my 2 end game scoring routes and even added one more towards the end… everyone else started getting some larger routes and the board was filling up nicely… then I realized the I had gone to Seattle instead of Vancouver… there was a single train double route and no one else seemed interested so I thought I’d have time to correct it with 1 train… I also needed a 3 train route to get to L.A. to finish 2 of the routes that overlapped in sections.. but the board filled up, the color of trains (and wild cards) I needed stopped appearing and I stalled and my lead shrunk…

By games end, everyone had taken extra route cards which score negative points if the routes aren’t completed… they were convinced that my hug lead from early in the game gave me the victory but I ended up losing 38 points in final scoring – dropping back in the middle of the pack while… I was thrilled to watch their faces as the others in turn revealed and tallied their final scores… my friend’s wife was right there with the rest of us… my friend was well ahead of us… my co-executor’s husband made a late move but couldn’t catch my friend… and the co-executor puled away with the win – the only player breaking 100!! She had commented during the game how much she was enjoying it but, when it was all over, she told me it was a great choice and one they planned on picking up for themselves. A wonderful evening with a group of the nicest people one could ever hope to meet!! And having my friend’s wife join in a game for the first time was icing on the cake for me… 🙂

April 15… I’ve been 3-D printing my brains out… mostly board game stuff… inserts, card holders and such (though my plan to drill holes in my second Tsuro insert to make room for the flags atop the ship’s masts was a bust)… I’ve spent several hours on a redesign but have to talk myself into printing it……

But now I was hoping to find something that would help me fit all of the cards and components from the Wingspan base game, the European and Oceania expansions I already had along with the new Americas expansion all in the base game box… to paraphrase Chief Brody from Jaws, “I’m gonna need a bigger BOX”… each expansion brought more eggs, more resources, more goal card and especially, more BIRD cards… I think we’re up to around 460+ bird cards total!! AND they’ve managed to keep the game balanced so I really don’t need to spend any more time trying to figure out percentages for how many bird cards, goals and Bonus cards to include when playing… but I still want it to all fit so I measured, designed and printed a set of 4 ‘lid lifters’ to raise the lid almost 2 inches… worked like a charm!!

I’ve also experimented with a few different card tray designs and layouts and think I’ve found a working combination that holds all the cards… I also printed a set of two component holders so I can split the components and players at either end of the table will have access… but I might be most proud of tonight’s modification… I had a Hummingbird tray that I liked but it had a large card tray attached and the more I packed and repacked, the more I wanted just the Hummingbirds by themselves… I stumbled on a different design that I liked then put my Tinkercad skills to the test… I was successfully able to make a copy (so I had 2 of the same), chop off the extra part from one, chop off everything but a duplicate of the rounded corner side I want to keep, rotate it and MERGE it with the original part I kept to make a single tray with rounded corners… I printed it before heading to bed and it’s PERFECT!!

Finally, some pictures!! 🙂

Here’s Tsuro of the Seas with generic inserts to keep everything organized…

And here are some from my Wingspan journey…

1. Shot of the inside of the box with everything (except the rulebooks though they all fit)…
   There are 2 of the blue / white cases to hold eggs, resources and nectar…
2. More of a side shot showing the lid lifters
3. The Hummingbird card holder I modified… in the upper right you can see the seem where I sliced off the parts I didn’t want and merged the two remaining pieces together (none of that shows when it’s printed)…
4. The Goals overlay to keep pieces from moving out of place in case of a table knock…
   The finished Hummingbird card holder…
   A small nest bowl to hold player’s eggs and stuff…
   And a dice tray that I ended up not needed because (see #1) I was able to get the bird house dice tower to fit with everything else – including 3 of the nest bowls…
5. The closed box with maybe an inch and a half of lid lift… everything is secure inside and the box – even with the lift – is very solid when closed…

April 16… Tonight Julie and I started a game of Wingspan after a quick refresh and teach of the new Hummingbird garden, bonus track and actions… by the time we had everything setup and ready to go, the dogs had to go out for the second time… they could tell there were storms headed our way – you can see it in the way they act… no one goes potty – they all just stand and stare down road then up in the sky – all the time sniffing the air…

We got a couple rounds in (and the Hummingbird piece is one I’ll never play without – very cool) before I had to take the dogs out for a third time and we called it a night… we settled into bed and YouTube just as the thunder started… I’d been watching the radar but the dogs knew too… 🙂

April 19… This morning I went grocery shopping, came home, unloaded and unpacked then made bacon and pancakes for breakfast for us (all the fur babies get a small bacon treat too)… I had brought Julie her favorite coffee so she was still in bed and ate hers there so I took mine to my office desk to watch some NBA playoff highlights – after which, I had to do a deep clean of the syrup overflow on several things on my desk… somewhere in the cleanup process I managed to tweak my back… I was still able to bend and, once I got moving, I was good but that initial standing or walking was a bit of a challenge… other than waking up for her coffee and again for breakfast, Julie and the dogs slept most of the day which gave me some quiet time to recover…

This afternoon – just as I was nodding off in my chair, Julie came in – ready to try Wingspan again… I’ve waited 3 days for this so I was going to play – even if I had to strap a board to my back to keep me upright… 🙂 Turned out sitting at the table didn’t bother my back at all… whew!!

In my head, having over 400 bird cards in the game (170 from the base game plus 3 expansions) would dilute the game and make it harder for players to get the cards they need to create combos and score well… I searched online for recommended deck configurations but couldn’t find anything helpful so I started calculating percentages beginning with the bird decks themselves… I was thinking that once I had proper ratios I could build decks with x number of cards from each deck then apply those same percentages to the Bonus cards and End of Round Bonuses… but one thing I kept reading finally clicked in my feeble mind… the original deck was well thought out and balanced and the designer had continued that same dedication to balance with each expansion so I was waaaaaaay over thinking this… Elizabeth Hargrave – to her credit – has designed everything to simply be mixed together and enjoy the game… the new hummingbird cards and mechanic that we really enjoyed had no real dependence on the other parts of the game… in fact, it makes it easier to gain resources and eggs and cards… the only thing mixing all the Bonus cards and End of Round Bonuses together does is decrease the chances of getting something hummingbird related in those areas which we would soon learn was a non-factor…

I created a player aid to help remind players of the game play and iconography…

With all that said, Julie and I spent 15-20 minutes splitting all the decks into sizes our hands could shuffle then mixing them together and shuffling and mixing and cutting and shuffling and trading half of each other’s cards before more shuffling and mixing and cutting and shuffling… we then placed all the cards in a 4 slot holder with a lid and slots to display cards that I had 3D printed earlier in the day and they all fit… barely… WHEW!! 🙂 Then we set off on a new game…

We’d forgotten how well the game flows and how fundamentally easy it is to play… to do well requires some serious thought and planning, but mechanically it’s pretty simple… play a bird or get some food or get some eggs or get some more birds… the only thing different with adding the Americas expansion is that, at the end of certain actions, a hummingbird will visit your habitat from the garden or return to the garden much like real-life hummingbirds would do…

Once we settled into the flow, the game went quick and we had a great time!! One of the interesting things in the game is that there are only 4 rounds and you start with 8 action markers so 8 actions in the first round BUT… at the end of each round, you use one marker to mark your end of round bonus and that stays there for the rest of the game so in round 2 you only have 7 actions… 6 in round 3 and only 5 actions in the final round which inevitably leads to players wanting just one more turn than they get… 🙂 In the end I managed a 103 – 79 win and was seriously thinking of trying to get Julie to play again after supper and chores and before bed but we were both ready to crash by then… 🙂

April 16… Magical Athlete arrived a couple days ago and it was easy enough to learn but I had to wait a couple days before Julie felt up to playing…

She had an MRI last Thursday for an enlarged pancreas and, in the process of putting an IV in, the hospital managed to blow two veins… Friday we got word that her gallbladder was loaded with stones which might explain some of the ongoing stomach pains she’s been dealing with for years… the hospital put her cancer doctor in touch with her surgeon… so far she has a GI on 7/4 and a meeting with the surgeon on 7/7… fingers crossed…

She was up and moving after supper tonight and I setup and convinced her to give Magical Athlete a quick try… with 2 players you play ‘double handed’ (we both control 2 racers) which worked pretty well… I can see where this might be crazier with more players but we enjoyed this 2 player variant – so much so that Julie immediately wanted to play again!! Unfortunately, I was wiped out from a weekend of bush cutting, mowing and van cleaning so we called it a night…

If the timing and all works out that I’m able to follow through on my planned ‘Day at the Races’ at the spring Adirondicon board game convention, this will be a great addition. 🙂

May 2… Julie setup at her first craft show today… she made some sales and new friends, had a great time and made it through the day without too much pain… she planned it well… drove herself, took her meds after she was setup so they’d be out of her system by the time she drove home… I’m happy to report that the carts and totes I got her for Christmas worked as planned and other vendors were asking where she got them… see – I DO know how to shop… sometimes… 🙂

She was home before supper and I knew she’d be headed for bed after a long day so I packed a few games and headed for a local game group’s bi-weekly meetup…

When I arrived I was surprised to see a comparatively large group of people already seated and waiting and another table of 3 already teaching a game!! Usually there might be 4-6 people in the beginning so we jump into a short game then, as more people arrive, split off into other groups depending on the game choices… before the first game was picked there must have been 12-14 people which is a great sign for the hobby in general but especially for this tiny local group… after games were picked there were 7 of us at a table trying to decide what to do… I had packed Tsuro of the Seas (with my 3D printed dragon blocks and storage trays) which plays up to 8 so that was perfect…

It play quick so when players are eliminated by running of the board or being eaten, etc., there isn’t long to wait… I was the third player out – shortly after the players to my left and right… when the game started, most of the dragons were the other side of the board, yet we were still the first ones out… 3 more followed not too long after – one from a dragon roll that placed a new dragon right where moments earlier it looked like he was in a great position… the final 2 players managed a few more moves in the now almost full board before a winner was declared… a few had played it before but it was a while ago and everyone seemed to enjoy the play… I enjoyed playing it with more than 2 or 3 players which is my usual count at home… 🙂

Earlier in the day I had been working out the timing for my planned Day at the Races at the spring Adirondicon gaming convention… running 4 games throughout the course of a day seemed like a lot to take on but as I started laying out the timing so I could submit it in the submissions app, it all seemed to come together… I even created an AI assisted poster that I modified and was excited to share… of course later this afternoon I get a call to standby for a band playing a wedding that day… their drummer is out of town and should be back but they wanted someone on call just in case… I’ve done this with this particular group before… I already know most of the tunes and will learn the one-offs of course… if I play, I’ll be ready and if not, they always send me a check even though I’ve told them that isn’t necessary… 🙂