Building With Hirst Arts Blocks

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the classes I took at Origins 2015 was building with Hirst Arts blocks.  I've played with them a bit before, but I've never really detailed the process on the blog.

The instructor had a half-dozen or so pre-cast & bagged sets to choose from - I chose a set made from the cavern molds, as I thought it'd be the most versatile to have in my collection (as opposed to a set that was strictly sci-fi or fantasy -themed).  Here's some pics of the instructor's assembled version:

We were given a bag of pieces and a bottle of glue, and basically told to go to town while the instructor lectured on general tips & ideas.  For some of the Hirst Arts molds, the pieces are very interchangeable and it's pretty much like building with LEGOs - there are a million different ways they can go together.  The cavern molds are not one those types of sets - the instructor specifically indicated "there's pretty much only one way that set can go together".  It was a bit frustrating at first without a schematic or anything, but eventually I sussed it out - here's the pieces I was able to get together during the class:

To finish the assembly, I was going to need a solid base.  I packed up the pieces carefully, and when I got home I grabbed a piece of foamcore board:

Then I laid out what I had:

Then I started duplicating the layout based on the pictures I took in class:

After I was confident I had the layout right, I started gluing everything down:

The glue that seems to get recommended the most by folks who build with Hirst Arts blocks is Aleene's Tacky Glue, but wood glue or regular PVA ("school glue") will also work.  Note: be generous with the glue - these blocks are cast from Hydrocal (lightweight gypsum cement) - they absorb a lot of moisture out of the glue.  When I initially assembled a lot of the pieces I thought I was using plenty of glue, but when I picked up the pieces a half-hour later most of them snapped apart.

After gluing everything down well and letting it dry overnight, I used a utility knife to trim off the excess foamboard:

(I left the door piece separate, so it can be removed if needed during a game).

Next, I coated the edges of the pieces with glue and sprinkled them with kitty litter:

I did the same to cover any obvious gaps on the interior of the set, too:

After the litter had dried, I mixed some glue 50/50 with water and dripped it on the kitty litter, to really "lock in" the gravel.

...and that's it - coming soon, we'll paint it up!

Jude's Origins 2015 Video Report

Origins Game Fair, Part II

The next morning, we made our way to the board room and started with an old favorite, Dominion:

It had been a while since I'd played, but it didn't take long to get back into the swing of things.  I'd forgotten how groundbreaking Dominion was when it came out, and how many games have copied it's mechanics since then.

After that, we went back to one of favorites from previous years, Wasabi!:

my only complaint about this game is that's it's been out of print for a while - I want a copy for my library!

Enough already:  Shopping time!

I picked up Risk: Godstorm because it's been on my shopping list forever, and I still loves me some Risk.  Plus lots of miniatures!

I also picked up Patchwork from the Mayfair Games booth - it was recommended to me by the guys at my FLGS, but they didn't have any in stock at the time.  It's two players (great for the wife & I) and I'm betting she'll like the theme. 

I neglected to take a picture, but I also picked up Qwirkle - another recommendation from the guys at the FLGS.

I also grabbed the most recent Pandemic expansion, The Cure.  Granted, I haven't played the last two Pandemic expansions I bought, but... hey, who asked you, anyway?

...and no convention shopping trip would be complete without buying some fresh dice - both for me:

...and for the boy:

He already rolls better than his old man:

Origins Game Fair Pt. I

A couple weeks ago the wife and I attended one of our favorite events of the year, Origins Game Fair!  This was our first year attending since the kiddo was born, which was a new experience to say the least.  While all our plans were tentative at best, we still managed to have a lot of fun.

We started out by picking up our badges - Origins moved to new system this year, where you printed out your confirmation email and scanned it at a kiosk, which then printed your badge & event tickets.  There was much raging on the Intarwebz about this new system, but for us (and pretty much everyone else I talked to in person) it worked fine.  The only glitch was that the locations of the events didn't print on your tickets, but taking five minutes to leaf through the event catalog and jotting the locations down on my tickets solved that problem.

We made our way to the Board Room, which is our group's usual base of operations during Origins - for a flat $20 fee, you can enter the Board Room anytime and check out any of the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society's 800+ games.  Since playing in an ticketed board game usually costs $2 - $4, it's really a great value.  The other motivation is that there's enough tables that our group usually just sets up camp there on Thursday, and comes and goes as needed - there's always a couple people hanging around to watch everyone's stuff, get a quick game in, or just sit and relax for a bit.

While waiting to check out a game, a couple members of our group struck up a conversation with another attendee who offered to teach them a game - it turned out to be IceTowers, a game that uses Icehouse pieces from Looney Labs:

(Icehouse pieces are abstract game pieces that can be used to play dozens of different games - there's even an entire book to give you ideas).  This game was a lot of fun, and I chatted with our new friend about Looney Labs in general - the wife & I used to spend a great deal of our time at Origins in Looney Labs "Big Experiment" (a room dedicated to nothing but Looney Labs' games), but apparently the company had some sort of falling out with Origins several years ago, and no longer maintains an official presence at the con.  Bummer.

After playing for a while, I decided to wander around and see what the convention center setup was like this year.  One of my first stops was the official convention merchandise booth - every year, I'm tempted to buy a hoodie and a messenger bag or backpack, but I never talk myself into, or if I do, they're sold out by the time I go to get it.  This year I resolved to budget for them ahead of time, and to pick them up ASAP.  I found the booth and asked - no bags this year, and no sweatshirts in my size.  Sad panda.

I wandered through the vendor hall and came across the Offworld Designs booth, who had done the official show merch in the past (although I believe Origins now does everything in house).  I talked with the employees there and after rummaging around for a bit they found one of the bags I wanted!  Hooray!

After heading back to the Board Room, I ran into some friends - one of them had purchased Boss Monster earlier that day, so we gave it a playthrough:

This was a fun game with a unique take: instead of being a hero and trying to get loot, you're an end boss of a video game level, and you're building a level to attract certain heroes to their doom.  The art is all very inspired by 8-bit Nintendo games (the box even looks like a cartridge, and the expansions are packaged in boxes that look like Game Boy cartridges).  Overall a fun, light game, even though I died in the second round.

I headed back over to our group's base camp and found them playing Pandemic: Contagion:

This is a version of the popular Pandemic family of games that uses a dice-based mechanic.  I watched them play for a while, and it looked like fun - it seemed similar in feel to the other Pandemic games.

Day II

The next day, I had a RPG bright & early - Baker Street by Fearlight Games:

Baker Street, as you might have guessed, it role-playing set in the world of Sherlock Holmes.  Our GM was Bryce Whitacre, who is actually the author of the game (and also GM'ed our amazing Masters of the Universe game last year).  This was a nice change of pace from your standard fantasy or sci-fi RPG - all the material is officially licensed from the Conan Doyle estate, and Bryce obviously has a lot of love for the material (as evidenced by the fact that he GM'ed the game while wearing a houndstooth overcoat, deerstalker cap, and carrying a pipe).  The book looked great and our group was a lot of fun.  I wasn't crazy about the mechanics, but it was a nice change of pace.  

I headed back to the Board Room and was looking to grab a quick game before my next event - someone in our group grabbed Diner by Dice Hate Me Games from the library:

While reading the instructions for the game, it mentioned that the game doesn't have turns.  No turns? to say I was skeptical was an understatement.  Turns out, this was a surprise hit.  It's one of those "hard-to-explain, easy-to-play" -type games, and our group had a lot of fun with it.  It would be easy to grasp for slightly older kids, but still fun for adults, and only takes ten or fifteen minutes to play - for ten bucks, I'd highly recommend it.

My next event was Building With Hirst Art Blocks - I had taken a similar class before at GenCon,  but I think it was $20 - this one was only $2, so I decided to give it a shot.  I figured it'd be a lecture about Hirst Arts blocks, then maybe you'd get to build a tiny accent piece of terrain or a deployment marker or something.  Turns out, it was building full size kits - there was some kind of mix up with Origins, and the only option they gave the instructor was to offer the class for the price printed in the catalog, or to cancel all the classes.  He decided to offer the class, but mentioned that donations of generic tokens would be gladly accepted.

We were offered our choice of several pre-sorted kits - I went with a cavern with pillars:

(Here's the instructor's completed set as an example):

This class was really great, and the instructor offered a lot of tips while we worked.  Needless to say, after class I ran downstairs and bought a handful of generic tokens to throw in his tip jar.

Next: Part 2!

Origins 2015!

It's time for our hometown convention, Origins Game Fair!  Watch my Twitter feed for up-to-the-minute updates, and I'll be back with a full report next week!

Origins 2014 Recap, Part II

Saturday

Saturday morning I hit the convention bright & early for an RPG - a Cartoon Action Hour game featuring the characters from He-Man & The Masters of the Universe.  It became fairly obvious what table my game was at when I walked into the ballroom and saw this guy:

...and of course, since it was Saturday morning and we were playing a game based on cartoons, the GM gave out sugary cereal:

...and the game was periodically interrupted by 1980's toy commercials:

Overall, this was one of my favorite events of the con.  The GM, Bryce Whitacre of Fearlight Games, did an amazing job of giving the game just the right mix of engaging action and absurd silliness, and the Cartoon Action Hour system was a lot of fun - I would have bought the book at the convention, but apparently it's in the process of being printed right now.

I had an hour or so to kill before my next event, so I wandered over to the minatures hall to see the sights:

Hey there, handsome

Some nice looking armies in the 40KOrigins area 

...my next event was a demo of Infinity - I had seen the game on blogs and at my FLGS, and had been impressed with the models, but never actually had a chance to play it.  The setup was two small teams on a 4'x4' board:

I liked the game well enough - unfortunately the team that was teaching the game was a man short, and our GM was trying to run two tables at once, and my opponent was on the phone dealing with some minor crisis involving workers at his house several states away, so... yeah.  Not the best intro to the game.  I also (out of complete blind luck) managed to stomp my opponent pretty badly, which isn't actually a lot of fun when you're trying to learn the nuances of a new game system.  I chatted with the GM for a bit afterwards to get a little bit of a better feel for the game, and it might be nice to have a small skirmish-type game around for a quick play.  And I do love me some terrain.  (I find it funny that "line-of-sight" has inspired more rage through the various versions of 40K than probably anything else over the years, and this game seems to revel in it).

After the Infinity demo, I headed back to the Board Room to meet up with my group.  I got there right as they were setting up Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries from Days of Wonder:

Ticket to Ride is one of my all-time favorites, and I had never played the Nordic Countries version.  The game incorporated two new mechanics - "ferries" and "tunnels".  I won't go into it here, but the short version is that I really liked the "ferries" mechanic, but hated the "tunnels".  There is also no hand limit in this version of TtR, which I liked a lot - overall this is one I'll definitely consider purchasing in the future.

After the game we decided to make a lap of the vendor hall before it closed - I stopped by the Mayfair Games booth and picked up the alternate maps & mini-expansions that I didn't own yet for Settlers of Catan:

I also browsed their clearance rack and found a copy of Horus for $7.00 that looked interesting:

After that, we headed over to the Paint 'N Take by Reaper Miniatures - this is something we do every year.  Everyone who buys a badge at the con gets a free miniature, plus use of paints & brushes - thanks Reaper!  I almost always choose a fantasy-themed model, but I'm still sick of them after building my Dwarfs army, so I picked a big stompy robot:

Not bad for 30 minutes, 4 colors, and a crappy brush

We finished right as they were shutting the hall down for the day, so we headed off in search of dinner...

Sunday

Sunday I was back in bright and early for a game of X-Wing Miniatures:

I've been both excited and apprehensive to try this game - excited because I'm a Gen-X male and it's frickin' Star Wars, people! And apprehensive because it looks like it could be waaaay too easy to drop a ton of money on.  Funderhammer & I have discussed this problem in the past:

...and I did have a blast:

...and I did have to talk myself out of buying the starter box in the vendor hall - the only thing that stopped me was that I checked Amazon and it was a lot cheaper there.  I think it is feasible to keep it to a modest investment, as long as you stayed with a few small ships per side, and didn't buy the Rebel Transport or any of the ridiculous-sized ships.  I've added a basic setup to my Amazon wish list, I'm hoping maybe Santa will come through this year...

After the game I made a final lap of the vendor hall (I didn't see anything I couldn't live without), grabbed some lunch, and headed home - another Origins in the bag!  See you next year!