Tabletop Games

Since school has started up, we’ve been hesitant to continue with the family game night. But you just can’t keep us down. We’ve decided to alternate Jaws of the Lion, a campaign game, with other games. Last time we met it was for mahjong. Tonight, we’re back in Gloomhaven. My goal with Jaws of the Lion was to completely 3D print the terrain, the miniatures, the furniture – everything. Unfortunately, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the 3D printer, but that’s really a story for another post. Because of the problems, I haven’t been able to finish printing the wooden floors for this scenario, or the stone floors for the next one. I have a barrel full of failed prints. Something about the floor tiles for wood and stone really seems to kill my printer. ...

The first part to the comic in the header image was over here, and the second part was right over there. In this comic, I’d finally realized that poor lighting wasn’t something I could fix in Picasa, and what I really needed was just a lot of lights. I’d started buying custom fonts to give the comic a better feel and to make it legible at different resolutions. The font of the words “Adventures in” in the first panel was the font I bought to do Wizard101 comics, as that’s the font that game uses. ...

We have been preparing for this night for a very long time. Tom has always had an intense interest in Mahjong, especially in the Japanese variant, Riichi Mahjong. He’s got books and books about it. Lots of apps. A vast collection of Vita and Super Famicom versions. Once while I was visiting him when he still lived in Ohio, he pulled out this beautiful, heavy, set, and we sat down and he taught me how to play. It’s just like the card game Rummy, he said, and it is… except that the Japanese, bless their hearts, decided that would be too easy, and so they added a bunch of win conditions you needed to also keep in mind if you wanted to build a winning hand. ...

There’s a lot of issues I have with gaming. Lack of time, for one. I’d really like to have a lot more time for gaming, and blogging about games. But then I think – hold on, wait a second, I work. And if I wasn’t working, then I’d be broke, and unable to play games (or at least, unable to enjoy playing games), and then I’d lose the house and be on the streets and be miserable and clutching the Othello set my mom bought me when I was a kid, my last remaining game. ...

Finally, finally, FINALLY! All the work Tom and I have been doing in printing and painting miniatures and dungeon parts paid off last night as we finally sat down to play the first two scenarios in Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. Now available at your local Target. Jaws of the Lion is an introductory campaign to the Gloomhaven universe, where you and up to three friends take on the roles of a renowned mercenary company, the “Jaws of the Lion”, who have taken a job to look for a missing blacksmith and stumble onto a body snatching plot leading to some evil end. ...

When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you have duct tape, every problem looks like “not enough duct tape. Add more.” And, when you have a 3D printer, every problem looks like it could be solved with a few days design work, twelve hours in failed print attempts, and eight hours for a successful one. Like the original Gloomhaven game, its beginner-friendly side story expansion Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion stores its character decks and player boards in slim little fold-top cardboard envelopes. These are just barely large enough to hold everything without sleeves. With sleeves, they are just entirely inadequate. They can’t be fit. ...

I’m printing all the scenarios in Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, in collaboration with my boyfriend, on a filament and a resin 3D printer. After the printing comes the painting. I know nothing about painting terrain or miniatures, but what better time to learn? This is all to make the best Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lion and Frosthaven playing experience we can create. Every time we play, it will be epic. ...

Back in the Before Times, when we only had a small number of board games, Game Night would rotate between Magic the Gathering, Vast and Terraforming Mars. Now we have dozens of games to play, but Terraforming Mars is still on our rotation. When the local game store opened as part of Connecticut’s post-pandemic reopening, I went there (masked, of course) looking for the Colonies expansion for Terraforming Mars. (We’d heard there were spaceships. SPACE. SHIPS.) They didn’t have it, but they did have another expansion we’d missed, Turmoil. ...

June hasn’t been the best month for gaming. Tom and I are ramping up our 3D printing, and working on that sort of stuff is taking more and more of our time. I hope it’s worth it. I have a severe backlog of minis to paint – I have to finish the Gloomhaven PC minis, I have an army of vermlings and cultists to paint for the first few Jaws of the Lions scenarios, some snakes… Plus printing the terrain tiles. ...

The huge, 20 pound box that Gloomhaven comes in can be more than a little intimidating, but that’s nothing compared to all the boxes, cards, tiles and popout tokens inside the game box. Gloomhaven is more than just a campaign-style adventure. It’s a system that supports the construction and play of millions of custom scenarios. But, it doesn’t lend itself to casual play. The floor tiles have to be found and arranged, the monster AIs need to be set up, their cards found and standees stood up. It could take half an hour to set up a session before I started working on organizing the stuff. ...