Tricking Out My Firefly Game

I love, love, love the Firefly board game. I'm a huge Firefly fan and the game by Gale Force Nine is amazingly immersive. I love to just fly around the 'verse doing jobs and it's almost disappointing when the story scenario ends (even though, yes, the games do tend to be at least two hours long). It's a massive game and we have just about every expansion (right now we are only missing the Esmerelda ship).

It's such a big game that set up can be intimidating. One thing that I've done to make that a little easier is that I got this card organizer.

This is one from Amazon that I saw recommended on Board Game Geek. I would love to have one big enough to have a separate holder for deck and discard but there are just far too many decks! I managed to get all the decks except the misbehave cards and the flying decks (border, rim, central). I also use the little holders on the side for parts, fuel, etc.

This has made a huge difference in our ability to actually play the game. Even though we still have to shuffle all the cards there is something about having them all sorted that makes pulling the game out feel more do-able (we leave this set up on a side table in our gaming room).

Another thing I did to make the game even more immersive was I painted the ships. They do sell some gorgeous kits for painting minis and I would love to get those but a bit too expensive for me so I did my best to paint the ones that came in the box.

(There's a Runebound figure in there too)

I have the play mat that puts the entire map with all current expansions on one. We had a break in one of the boards plus putting boards next to each other means shifting around and it's just not ideal. The mat is really nice to have.

I really want to get these ship caddies someone designed on Thingiverse, but they are not available for order. Probably because, as I discovered with my Runebound caddies, they would be too expensive to produce. I think I will try to do something like this with layers of cardboard. My husband is not sold on this idea, though, as I would be cutting into the ship caddies that the game comes with.

What I can get from Thingiverse are these little crates. My brother is printing these out for me and I'm going to paint them and then glue them to the cargo and contraband cards. I'd like to do something similar with passenger/fugitive figurines.

So that's all the ways I've thought of so far to totally trick out my Firefly game!

Learning 3D Modeling

In order to make my own board game components and component organizers I spent yesterday learning to 3d model in Google's Sketch Up.

I spent hours creating the perfect Runebound 2nd Ed caddy, everything that I would want.



Then I uploaded it to a site that allows you to buy your model and it priced out at over $300 at the cheapest!

So I went back and tried to make smaller ones, more efficient ones, but I could never get it less than $50. Not a reasonable price for a player caddy that we would need to each player.



Now I'm rethinking again how to accomplish what I want. My newest plan is to use layers of cardboard and an exacto knife.

Runebound 2nd Ed Player Caddy

My brother turned me on to the world of 3d printing. He's got a little one of his own and has offered to print me stuff that I want for my games if I can find it on Thingiverse. Browsing there I came upon a game caddy for a game called Arcadia Quest 3d. I don't know the game but looking at the caddy made me think how useful it would be to have something like that for Runebound 2nd Ed.

I've been playing Runebound for years now. The first thing that appealed to me about it was that you level up a character within the game. You start with easier fights and update your character's stats however you want to take on more challenging fights. I love that about it.


Unfortunately it is now out of print so it is quite expensive to buy, but there is a third edition now so I may need to check that out.

As you play you've got your character card and hearts and sweat, plus gold, items, allies, xp counters, and level up markers. Tons of stuff that is just crying out for an organizing system.

I tried to think if the Arcadia Quest one would work and even though it might, I wanted one made just for Runebound.

My first thought was to make one with sculpey clay I already had at home. So I tried. But I'm not very happy with the result...



It doesn't look clean, crisp, or nice. It just doesn't quite work. So I think it is time to learn how to use 3d modeling software!

Ghostbusters: The Game

My husband and I played Ghostbusters The Game when we saw it in the open gaming room at the World BoardGaming Championships. Just the theme caught our eye and we had never heard anything about it before. We quickly saw its potential and bought a copy when we got home!


This game is very immersive. It makes you feel like you're really there with great artwork and components. I love that there's a little board representing the inside of the ecto-1. The instruction cards look like notes from a notebook. The only thing that I thought was odd is the cardboard circles representing proton streams don't fit around the bases of the ghost figures. They almost do, though, so it seems like they are meant to but they just don't quite make it.

The arrow on this is well designed and I love games where I can level up a character!

There were just a few things I wanted to enhance for this game. The minis for the ecto-1 and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man have lots of detail but are plain white. So I painted them.

I also made cardboard traps because there wasn't a good place to represent holding our captured ghosts until they are put back in the spirit world.

I want to at some point paint the Ghostbuster figures themselves too.

Plans to update my board games

I am an avid board gamer. I even met my husband through gaming!

I bring my creativity and craftiness to making storage solutions and updated bits for my games.

I will document here the changes I make to my games as well as a few reviews, stories, and many videos.

My favorite games are deck building, resource management, and rpg elements (though I actually don't do tabletop roleplaying)