There's been a lot of printing, cutting, sleeving and laminating going on recently, as I've been working on even more games to bring to the tabletop.

Up first, I got the new version of Secret Hitler, in Secret Sith Lord, all finished and ready for some action. I even managed to come up with a better plan than the paper envelopes we'd been using all these years, as they would constantly wear out and would need to be replaced. Especially if alcohol was involved.

The next game to get some attention was Black Sonata. I'd printed out the tokens for its expansion back when I printed the base game. But I've only now pulled my finger out and printed all of the expansion cards. The expansion is called the Fair Youth, which means in addition to finding who the Dark Lady is, you also have to go around looking for the Fair Youth. Sounds a bit dodgy to me, Shakespeare.

The final game in this little print marathon is a bit of a dodgy one. I've been wanting Whitehall Mystery ever since I saw gameplay on Youtube a few years back. But it was unavailable here in the UK for ages, and Scotland Yard did nothing to quench my desire.

The damn thing is, it seems at some point earlier this year, there were a few copies of another print run available here. But like the idiot I am, I completely missed it, and now they're all gone again.

So I've been a bit of a dodgy geezer, and printed my own, until it's (hopefully) available yet again. I just need to make a screen for Jack to use, which I can also use when the printing police come looking for me.

Just print more copies of the game! Jackasses!

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Now I'd finally got the Black Sonata expansion fully printed, I decided it was time to bring this game to the table again.

Up first, I thought it prudent to play a vanilla game without any expansion content, to help me remember the game.

This first effort did not go according to plan. The Dark Lady's double backs along her route confused me, and on subsequent laps I could only manage vague recollections of where she'd been. Because of this, I searched many times in empty locations. However, I managed to get two good searches on her late on and managed to win. The victory was quite hollow, however, as I had no fog cards left, and only 4 cards in the stealth deck on its last rotation.
This all gave me a meagre 4 points.

Just a warm up, though. I hoped.

In the second game, I made it much harder and much easier at the same time. I chose a more difficult route for the stealth deck, used the tougher Dark Lady cards from the expansion, and also added in the Fair Youth component. However, what turned the game in my favour was that I allowed myself to take notes this time. I have no idea if you're "supposed" to be allowed to do this, but it really did make it much easier.

For the Dark Lady's first rotation, I jotted down all the landmarks she visited, while I went all over the board hunting for clues about the Fair Youth's hideout. So at the end of that rotation, I sat there and worked out a good chunk of her route, as well as nailed down where the Fair Youth was hiding.

So, after I got enough clues to the Dark Lady's identity, I was able to successfully finish the game with both tasks completed and 44 points in my back pocket. A much better effort, but one that I would never have managed without keeping the notes.

I'm really not sure why, but just recently I had the hankering to retrieve an old electronic game from the loft and give it a good old renovating. The game in question is Super Cup Football, made by Tomy back in the 80s. Ordinarily, this thing runs on batteries, but I wanted to change that, along with a bunch of other little tweaks.

Up first, the entire thing needed a massive clean, not only to remove all the dirt but also those silly stickers I'd used to indicate which lever controlled which player. So I went over it with WD40, followed by using some toothpaste with an old firm toothbrush to really get into the corners. It's mostly come up pretty well. I just wish I could do something about the state of the pitch.

Now, I sure as hell wasn't going to bother with batteries for this old clunker, so I decided it needed to be mains-powered. To achieve this, I removed the wires that took the power from the batteries to the motor, and drilled a hole through into the battery compartment that the wires could go through.
Then I got an adjustable power supply that came with a multitude of different attachments. One of these, originally meant for an LED strip, was perfect for the job. It allowed me to screw the two wires into it, so the mains adapter could then be attached and unattached at will.
The only thing needed after this was to drill a hole so that the power cable had access into the compartment, and all was golden.

I also gave the game a good clean under the hood, paying attention to all of the whirring rods, before re-greasing them to allow the players to move up and down the pitch as freely as possible.

Speaking of movement, there was one little problem I was unable to solve. All those years in the ever-changing temperatures of the loft have slightly warped the plastic pitch, meaning not enough pressure now pushes down on some of the boxes that move the players. This in turn means the little gears sometimes don't fully connect, and some of the players can stutter a bit as they move up and down.

I saw someone on Youtube, in the middle of repairing one of these games, who also had a similar issue. He glued on an extra thin layer of plastic to create a bit more contact and pressure, but while I have tried a similar thing, it doesn't seem to have done much.
Oh well.

The last thing that I could do to update this old beast was to repaint the players. I'd originally added a little paint to the red team back when I was a kid to make them look like Man Utd, but the blue team were untouched. I decided both teams needed work, and I've made them look how very generic red and blue teams from many years ago would have looked. I think it suits the style of the game much better.

So that's it. All done. Who knows if this thing will ever actually get any use again. But at least it's an option now if anyone ever fancies it.

For now, the poor old rattler has gone back into the loft, so that I can move on to something else...

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Back in August, I got to play a whole bunch of 8 and 9 player games of Secret Hitler while on holiday with a group of family and friends. We'd not played this in many years, but it only took a little while to get back into it. The new players we introduced to the game also seemed to really like it, and upon returning home, I started work on a new version of the game. This version is based on a community re-skin of the game called Secret Sith Lord.

I'm looking forward to finishing it so we can play the game without some people feeling like a right bunch of Nazis.

Something awesome happened just recently when Scoob straight up gave me his elf Blood Bowl team. What's even better is he also gave me a treeman model to go with them.

I never played Warhammer Fantasy like he did, so I had to do a bit of research to learn that this is actually the old Durthu model, who is one of the characters from the wood elf army. While it was super freaking cool to just be given this model, I knew I would have to modify it at least a little bit, as I really didn't like him having that massive arm up in the air and looking all goofy.

So out came the hacksaw and other tools in order to completely re-pose and pin the arm so that it didn't look so weird. It will also fit into a storage box much easier in this new configuration.

All that was needed after that was a little Milliput to fill in the gaps and strengthen the joints, including where the treeman meets his new base.

While Scoob intended this model to be on the wood elf roster, I think I'm more likely to use it as the star player, Deeproot Strongbranch, as it is quite big. So I'll have to get another one for the team.

Speaking of the team, in terms of painting them, I really want to choose some colours that you would never normally associate with wood elves. It makes sense to use a lot of purple and/or red, as these are Scoob's favourites, so I started making up some ideas in Photoshop.

I really like all three options, but I've already got a black and red team in my undead team, and a red team on the way courtesy of the lizardmen. So it means the purple and blue option might be the way to go. No rush for any of that though, as I'll need a few more players to fill out the roster first.

Over the Crimbo holiday we had the chance to sit down and play a few games. After the tutorial, we started with the first, supposedly easy, adventure from the Unlock: Mythic Adventures box. This thing was frustrating as hell, with it not being clear exactly what to do with parts of the app, the requirement of little "rule breaks", and the stupid little plastic viewing card being almost impossible to use correctly. We ended up being a massive 17 minutes over time, even with several hints to help us along. Even after finally brute forcing our way through some of the puzzles, we still didn't fully understand some of them. The necessary leaps in logic were insane.
Let's hope the next one in the box is more enjoyable than this. If we ever get around to it...

Following on from that, what was supposed to be a little palate cleanser, Bandido, ended up being the one we played the most games of. Like Unlock, we struggled like hell, and only managed to win one of about seven games. However, unlike Unlock, this thing actually made sense and actually got us enjoying it. Even the cat joined in.

Lastly, we played a couple of games of Deep Pockets. We'd not played this since Christmas four years ago, so it was good to pull it out again. Didn't take long for us to get back into it, and it proved to be the game we probably enjoyed the most from the ones we played. I even managed to win a game. Wowzer.

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So I had a think about those Eldar power generators, and decided that there indeed was a better way to do them. I snipped out the wooden crystals from the centers, and have ordered some coloured plastic crystals from ebay to replace them. Still not fully sure how to do the replacement, but I'll figure something out. Probably with some wires to look like crackling beams of power or something.

Speaking of crystals, I've been thinking about and working on new Super Dungeon things for a while now, which has motivated me to make my first purchase for the game in quite a while. It's the Dungeons Of Crystalia tile pack that took my fancy, after I decided I needed more varied maps. Believe it or not, I actually first tried to buy this pack a couple of years ago, but there was a mix up somehow with the delivery and it never arrived. After getting my money back, I convinced myself that I didn't actually need to buy it. But I saw it randomly pretty cheap so went for it again. What the hell. Only live once. And if my new rules work I'll be happy to have them.

I've also taken the spare wooden squares that I bought for The Shipwreck Arcana build, and have made some more "terrain thingies" for Super Dungeon, just in case we find we need them.

Over the last few years, I've put together quite a lot of tabletop games by printing off and assembling them myself. In nearly every case, I've taken the official print'n'play version of the game, and heavily modified it in my own way, to either make it easier on my printer ink, or make cards fit my available card sleeves, for example.

This next game was going to need more modification and work than probably all of the others combined. The game is called The Shipwreck Arcana, a co-operative game where players must work together to divine their fates and escape their doom! Sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is, considering the game is mainly just "guess which number I'm holding". I'd have much preferred to have bought it, but I've had my eyes on it for months, and it has just not been available here.

The game consists of cards and wooden tokens. The cards were no problem. I took the print'n'play version of the game, removed a lot of black parts from the cards to save ink, printed them out, and slid them into some new tarot card size sleeves I bought.

But there's no way of downloading and printing the wooden tokens. Not without a real fancy printer, that is. So I had to go about making them myself.

I bought some laser cut wooden squares, with the extras going into my Super Dungeon Explore box to be integrated into that game later. Then there was a lot of painting, creating templates for the numbers, more painting, and finally sealing to get them done.

So the game is now ready and just waiting its turn at the table. I hope the enjoyment we get is worth all the effort.