New Years Board Gaming
Happy New Year everyone! Survived another year. 
Not much happening on the making-stuff front. Still busy with school and teaching. However, I did manage to sneak in a bit of board gaming geekiness into my holiday. Played some Settlers of Catan, Alien Frontiers, and finally got to play Nexus Ops for the first time. My son is getting old enough now to understand gaming mechanics so it was something of an experiment. Seems to have paid off.
One of fun aspects of boardgaming is upgrading or customizing the components to your games so they look more attractive or thematic or to make them more durable. Nexus ops comes with a three dimensional central board piece that is quite flimsy so I set about making my own. I had some Sculpey polymer clay sitting around so I decided to use it. The project didn't take long at all. I just kneaded he clay and pressed it out to 3/4" thickness and used a template to cut the hexagonal shape. I baked it in the oven for 45 minutes and that was pretty much it. I glued the icon reminders on the sides and then cut a hexagon from a piece of black craft foam sheeting for the bottom to compensate for any unevenness in the shaping of the clay, and that's it. Just a big greyish block to battle over. I have one last day off before going back to the grind so we'll test it out today.
I know, it's a small project. But considering how limited my time has been, I feel it's a small victory. I'll take what I can get.
Until next time!