Games
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
One can see parts 1-4 of this discourse here, here, here and here.
Ok everything is done (well one smidge left but we will ignore that for now), so I can write the final blog entry now. What else needed to be done. There is the box, which is just the trivial pursuit box I used the board from covered with some colour printuts and covered in 'Contact' clear adhesive. Not the best job but definitely functional.
The rulebook I had made at Artscow for $20, and is a nice full colour glossy hardbound volume. Rulebooks are one thing that often look shabby in PnP games, detracting from the quality, and I thought the small expense gave my copy a touch of class (and my name is in it as I joined in the community remaking the project at just the right time to be a proof reader).
The pawns were helpfully supplied by a member here, mjl1783, bought from a toy surplus store (they come from a Buck Rogers game). They are a bit small and fiddly, and the snakes and ladders pawns I started using before I got these are definitely more functional. However I think that these add to the look and it feels really nice when you upgrade your ship and then upgrade your pawn. A couple of the colours are wrong, so I have to paint them but this won't take long once I get onto it (I am writing this blog while waiting for the undercoat to dry).
The money I use is a set of cards made by Artscow. I had to get these remade after my first attempt failed and a big chunk of the pictures was cropped off (500s were 00s). I could have just printed it off with a colour printer for much less, but I suddenly had a real aversion to using paper money. It just feels really cheap for some reason, and these cards are great to use so I am glad I did this.
Dice are another necessity, as is a cloth bag for drawing counters from (plus I bought a couple of beading containers for storing the goods tokens while sorted). Luckily I had a bag and most dice, but I bought some special individual dice for each race to use. The following is a shot of a 3 player game about half way through with it all together. My friend who was playing his first game won by a turn from me (I deliberately handicapped myself by buying a freighter which I think isn't the best strategy in a $2000 game), and my daughter was way behind at only $1400.
I am very happy with my set, but it was expensive to build (somewhere between AU$250-300). I probably could have gotten a set for half that amount, but it wouldn't have spaceship pawns, it wouldn't have that nice rulebook, it wouldn't have card money and it wouldn't have those nice wooden disks. I probably would have spent another $50-100 pimping it to this level as I have pimped many of my favourite games, so in the end I think my copy is worth it. Well I think it was worth it. About 10 games have been played so far on my set, some solo, most with my 6 year old daughter plus the game pictured with my daughter and friend, but the key aspect of this is that my wife is yet to play a game. The whole point of doing this was to find a game we would enjoy playing together but she has been busy finishing her PhD and doesn't have the energy to devote to playing games at the moment (astute readers here may have noticed I said she was a couple of months from submitting about a year ago, but she has been a few months from finishing for 4 years).
The big surprise of this project was the time. When I embarked on it I was expecting it would take 3-9 months of work on and off, but it was only 27 days from the day that I started planning until the day I played my first game. In that time I also built a copy of 'The Legend of Robin Hood' for only $3 using spare parts from this project, though it only has cardboard counters and a laminated paper board. This has given me the confidence to do this again in the future, particularly if I can work out a better way of doing boards (I won't do round counters again unless I can somehow sharpen my circle punches and get them to work properly). The one regret is that I really shouldn't have made the expansions for the game. I made about 30% more components than I needed to (though not doing so wouldn't have saved much time or money which was why I made them), as now that I understand the game I know that I won't use the bulk of them. I am really enjoying the game, and in spite of the time, effort and money I have spent doing this, am secretly hoping it gets remade by Z Man or FFG some time in the near future, as there are a few aspects that require tweaking (such as equipment like drives which don't seem like they are ever worth it).
