It seems to be that time of year again when I get the enormous urge to print board game stuff. The problem here is that I'd pretty much run out of card to print stuff out onto.

This meant a trip to the shops was in order so I could pick up a massive stack of the stuff.

Up first for the printing treatment was a game I've wanted to play for a long time, that I finally purchased recently. This is the pirate racing game called Jamaica.

The problem with this game is that all of the cards are really weird sizes, and as I am someone who likes to sleeve all of the games in the world, it bothered me that no sleeves were available.

So instead, I scanned in all of the cards and remade them to fit standard sleeves, and also be way clearer with their instructions at the same time.

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After our little dabble in this game at the board game cafe, I decided to have a mooch around to see if I could find it for a decent price.

Now, I normally like to buy brand new games, so I know that everything is there and in good condition. However, I found a listing for this game on ebay so cheap that it seemed worth the risk, even though the pictures didn't tell much of a story, and the description didn't even say whether it was even all there.

So I took the plunge, and am happy to report that it all worked out. A fully complete Castle Panic, in fairly good nick, for just £12. Less than half price. Can't grumble.

To keep this thing in somewhat usable condition, I thought it could do with a little bit of work.

Up first, I painted thinned down PVA glue around the edges of all the card pieces, as some of them were in the early stages of separation. I also glued the castle pieces into their stands.
Then I sleeved up the cards in my typical way, but they were slightly smaller than standard sleeve size, so I had to cut some card backing sheets to go in there with them.

Then the game was ready for a second attempt, which also saw us introduce the game to three new players. This time, we knew what we were doing a lot more, and our trades were far more efficient.
By the time we'd seen off all the enemies, only two of our towers were down.

A lot better than the lone survivor from last time.

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Now I'm loaded up with card to print on, I've been on the warpath looking for good print and play games. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be solitaire games, so they will not be able to journey with me to games nights.

One interesting little solitaire puzzle game I've found is Crystallo.

In this, the player must use a special deck of cards to match up symbols, which signifies an adventurer working their way through the lair of a Black Dragon, as they attempt to free six mythological creatures from the dragon's clutches.

Though the game is free, there was a fully produced version a while back that is no longer available. This version had these cool little gems to use as tokens, and I wanted to get the same feel for my version of the game.

On ebay, I found a pack of 30 plastic gems. The problem here was that the colours were random. But I figured there would be a good chance of getting 3 each of 6 different colours that could be used for the game.

However, as is typical, I didn't get what I wanted at all. There was just 1 each of red, blue and green, and there were only 2 yellows.
In contrast, there were 5 transparent, 5 pink, and 4 pale lilac. There was no other option: I was going to have to colour some of them.

First, I got a yellow sharpie and coloured one of the transparents. This matched very well. If some varnish could seal that colour in, I'd be sorted.

Then I coloured 2 of the transparents with a turquoise, hoping to match the single green to them, and make 3 crystals that would look sort-of sea green.

However this was a disaster. Not only could I not get the colours to match, I also made one hell of a mess trying to wipe off the sharpie ink afterwards.

After looking at some glass paints from a nearby store, I came to the conclusion that these wouldn't work either. As I could think of no other option, I elected to get another pack of the gems.

In this pack, there are plenty of greens and blues, but only one more red, meaning that this colour remains off limits. Shame, as there is a Firefox creature in the game.

Still, I now have a selection of 9 colours to choose from, and as I'm probably going to design my own version of the game from the ground up, I'll be able to pick the 6 most suitable ones for the task.

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It's hard to believe it's been two years since our first (and last) efforts at playing this game. I guess with Whitehall Mystery at our disposal, this game won't get much of a look in any more.

Still, on this occasion there were more players wanting to hunt the murderer, so this one came out in lieu of Whitehall.

Gareth braved the task of outrunning us coppers, but his starting place ended up being right up a corner, and he was pretty much boxed in from the start.

As is typical for me, I ended up starting in the complete opposite corner, so didn't even get in on the hunt.

With the other four officers blocking off any real escape route, Mr. X could not weave through the net and was soon slapped in handcuffs.

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Recently I've had two attempts at being Jack again in Whitehall Mystery. The first game of this came a few weeks ago, where I managed my one and only win so far. Typical that it was the one game I took no photos of.

The latest game saw me sneaking to the second drop off point without having to use any of my special cards for the first time. But all was not rosy in the murdering business. The rozzers were all hovering around me the entire run, and even though I managed to dump and carriage away, they immediately arrested me on the space I'd fled to, and my pretty decent start was immediately squashed.

Don't do crime and expect to get away with it, kids.

Got to play our first game of Castle Panic recently when we visited a board game cafe in Birmingham.

In this, the players must work together to trade and use the right type of cards in order to kill off an encroaching horde of enemies. Said attackers have just one goal: to smash up the castle in the middle of the board.
If at any point all 6 castle towers are destroyed then the game is over and the players have failed.

This is an absolute classic game, and a pretty simple one at that. I'd seen gameplay of it a few times on Youtube over the years, so it was good to finally give it a go.

We definitely weren't trading cards correctly early in the game and we came under a lot of pressure, before we got our shit together and finally turfed those monsters out of there.

It seemed to go down really well, and I've managed to secure a copy from ebay for a measly £12. I just hope it's in pretty decent nick and all the bits are there, as the photos were a bit lacking in that regard.

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Probably the board game I've been most obsessed with over the last few weeks has been the puzzle game Cryptid, which I have delved into on Youtube quite a lot recently.

This is a competitive game played on a grid of hexes, where players are attempting to find the lair of the mysterious cryptid, which can only exist in one single hex. Each player is secretly given some information that eliminates some of the hexes. They then have to figure out what information the other players have by asking questions of them and performing searches, with the first player to successfully search the correct hex being crowned the winner.

We had a little muck around with it on our recent trip to a board game cafe. As of yet, I'm not sure how well it went down, so I'll have to float the question to the group as to whether this one is worth me picking up.

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The whole issue with Viking Raiders not having a big enough box for sleeved cards was getting on my nerves.

To that end, I had a think about what I could possibly do to fix this problem, and came up with a strange solution.

Using some cereal packet card and some foamcore, I created kind-of like a "sleeve" for the original box to sit in. This means that all of the cards can live together in one box with the lid fully closed, as one of the card decks can live down in the basement.

There's been a considerable amount of dice rolling going on recently.

Up first was an absolute mammoth game of Risk: Game Of Thrones, which consisted of 7 players, meaning we needed to use the 2nd map as well.

While this was not our first game using both maps, the first game only went a few turns as we were limited on time.

Unfortunately, we were not able to fully finish this game either, but it lasted a lot longer at four hours.

The game started pretty well balanced, with everyone receiving 5 armies per turn except the reds who were picking up 6.

A few players quickly picked areas of the map to focus on, but some of us were too spread out to really get a foothold anywhere.

I spent most of the game trying in vain to take the Andalos region with my little green dudes, a task I only completed about 2 turns before the end of the game. This was because I finally managed to bring in reinforcements from cards for the first time in the game, so few attacks did I succeed in.

Then disaster struck. As it was getting way too late, rather than wait for the Valar Morghulis card, we instead set a turn limit. This meant we all knew exactly when things were going to end, and so everyone got very aggressive. It also allowed the reds, who were dead last in turn order, complete freedom to attack with impunity, and they stomped through my hard fought Andalos in huge numbers, and pretty much wiped me from the game.

Final score

Red: 34, Orange: 27, Blue: 26, Yellow: 20, Black: 13, White: 12, Green: 7.

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A game that didn't get a look in all last year, despite me working like a dog on it throughout 2022, was Super Dungeon Explore.

While I'd got (a little) time, I dug out the rules and set up a solo game with 4 heroes.

Like every time I try and make new rules, there are always some good things and some bad.

One of the good things was that I think it only took 7 turns to complete the first level. As I want the game to be snappy and quick, this should have seemed like good news.

However, playing it still felt way too long. Yes, a lot of my time was spent re-reading the rules to remember exactly what I had written, but still.

Unfortunately, I was too busy to finish the run before needing to set up the tables for some 40K action, so didn't progress beyond level 1.

Still, the basic gameplay seemed way better than my earlier efforts. But if it's going to take hours to finish a 4 level game with 4 players, what will be the point?

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More than three years after I played through this game using the solo variant, I finally managed to get it to the tabletop so that other people could have a crack at it.

This time, I would be playing the role of "The Chisel", as the other players went back in time to 1940s L.A. to hunt some murderers in Detective: City Of Angels.

My task for this game would be to respond as the players questioned the suspects, and hand out information if they found anything during their searches.

Technically, it's possible for the Chisel to win the game if they can mess with the Detectives enough so that they can not solve the case. However, I informed the other players beforehand that this was not going to be the way I was going to play it. Instead, I wanted to try and keep the game as close as possible, mostly messing with players who I thought were doing better.

In addition to this, as I got a bit more used to playing the Chisel role, I also started to mess with players a little if I thought they were on the right track with their questioning, while not really hampering their efforts if they seemed to be barking up the wrong tree. Whether or not the players picked up on this tactic I do not know. Though if they actually read my website, they may know this for the future.

By the end of the first case, none of the players were able to find the solution, as they all missed some vital info about how the victim got shot, which may have led them down the correct path.

We went straight into the 2nd case, as it pretty much follows on from the first. This time, the players were much more on it, and Gareth solved correctly with 2 days left. As he did this, both of the other players revealed their answers, and they had also both pencilled in the correct solution, so either would have won if it was their turn next.

At the end of the day, I was happy that I was managing to keep them all quite close together in terms of information.

In the tabletop hobby, there aren't many things I hate having to do more than painting. However, stripping old paint is certainly one of those things. I think I would prefer to paint all of my armies twice over than to go through much more of this stripping nonsense.

But alas, these models had been waiting patiently to get a darn good strip for over a year, so I thought it was about time it got done.

Into the pot went some Epic Orks, an old Warlord Titan, and the Space Crusade Dreadnought.

After having a couple of good dunks, and after picking at the remaining paint with pins and tweezers, I got them as good as I possibly could.

Up next was the re-assembly, as I really wanted to get them undercoated in a bit of a spraying session that was coming up.

The Warlord and the Dreadnought both needed pinning, as some parts were snapped on their original joints. Typically, once this was all done, I stumbled upon the plasma gun for the Dreadnought in a random bits box. Though this was discovered too late for the stripping, I think it might be ok if I use its original paint as an undercoat, and go over it with somewhat similar colours.

In the spraying session, I got to use some new Colour Forge sprays for the first time. I fucking love these, at least as much as I have used them so far. The matt varnish in particular was very good, and really brought all that Callidus Assassin shininess back under control.