By Guest Contributor: Les Cheung
One of the things I like to do is embellish and/or retheme board games.
Briefly stated, to me, board game embellishment is adding/changing elements that furthers the cause of immersive storytelling while keeping the original game's theme and intent.
The point of this article is to hopefully encourage others to give this side hobby a try. It's the idea and the passion you put into it that matters.
Retheming does not necessarily do the same things as embellishment because you are only changing the theme and potentially intent of the game. It is still a tribute to the original design but in a theme that is more personally identifiable or "cool" to me. Of course, whenever I retheme a game, I also add embellishments too.
Overview of Game
I recently had the opportunity to play a game of Chariot Race, designed by Matt Leacock. It is a two to six player, 2 lap racing game where players are charioteers racing to reach the finish line. This sounds simple enough but in the style of "Ben Hur", it can be far from fair - but in a fun way!
You need to manage your speed, chariot damage and "Fortuna", which represents your standing with the Goddess Fortuna who governs your fate. The game uses dice that give you action symbols that will determine how well you control your chariot. To mitigate the "luck of the die", you have 3 options. First, you always have a reroll for some or all of your dice (think Yahtzee, King of Tokyo, Saint Malo, etc.) but only once. Secondly, you can spend Fortuna points (on your Fate Track) to either gain an additional reroll, or lastly, spend Fortuna to change 1 die's facing to whatever you want.
The die symbols allow you to increase/decrease speed, throw spears/drop caltrops (spikes), change lanes (really important!) or gain Fortuna (used to affect dice or heal damage). Changing speed is interesting (besides the obvious: it is a race!) because your speed affects the number of dice you roll. Decreasing speed can increase the number of dice you roll (more dice means more symbol possibilities) while increasing speed can decrease the number of dice you roll (throw caution to the wind!)
If you choose to throw spears at an opponent close by or drop caltrops in a space you have just travelled you can damage other player's chariots. For those with less refined taste, you can simply ram into your opponents which causes damage to you both. Accumulated damage affects your maximum speed and as previously mentioned, speed affects the number of dice you can roll, so you can see how this mayhem combines into a cyclical fast frenetic racing game.
Finally, you also have to worry about obstacles. Piles of debris are situated around the track where there is no concern of damage as hitting one simply destroys your chariot. ie. you NEED to have rolled lane change symbols!
I had looked at other great racing games before such as Formula Dé, Das Motorsportspiel, GMT's Nascar, Moto Grand Prix, and Automobiles, but Chariot Race was the answer I was looking for.
Not only did we have a blast with 6 players, but we also played an embellished version featuring 3D chariot models with fantastical beasts pulling them on a larger circuit with embedded textural spaces; courtesy of Scott Ferrier. Designer Matt Leacock also dropped by for a look!
Needless to say, I ordered the game the next day but what could I do to create my version of the game? The answer was quick as I had long wanted to retheme a racing game to Star Wars: Podracing from The Phantom Menace. Over the years, I had seen others use miniatures rules for similar theming but I wanted a game that was, um, fast and furious. I had looked at other great racing games before such as Formula Dé, Das Motorsportspiel, GMT's Nascar, Moto Grand Prix, and Automobiles, but Chariot Race was the answer I was looking for. Podracing from the Star Wars prequel was similarly, frenetic, and full of mayhem.
Planning
I already had a set of Pod Racer micro machines to use. I just needed to start with a new board: I used 2" pink insulation sheet, a carpet knife, heat gun, some dark brown and light brown paint, white glue, baking soda and Mod Podge.
You can see a great video of the technique I learned from Hall of Craft: Crafting Desert Terrain on Youtube.
I used CorelDraw to redraw the original track spaces. Then I edited it into a track shape that was more irregular. I scaled it up to make spaces appropriate for the micro machines and then printed them out at size. The pic shows the printouts taped to the pink foam board.
Once in position and securely taped, I used a carpet knife to cut trace the track spaces into the foam.
Then I used a wood stool (anything round and heavy would do) and slammed it into the foam in various random ways. Sometimes I pressed into the foam with the it or rolled it with pressure. Next, a heat gun was used to heat the track lines which caused them to "open". Heat was also applied to accentuate the hills and crevices I made with the bench indentations.
Painting
I combined equal parts dark brown paint and Mod Podge to cover the pink foam. Afterwards, I combined equal parts light brown paint, white glue and baking soda and repainted the surface. This was also done to the rocks I cut from foam as well.
Part of the fun in retheming is keeping the original mechanics but using a different theme that still "works". There were no caltrops in Podracing but as they caused minor damage, I decided to make Tusken Raider tokens as they do fire on the racers in the movie. The dice were simple to make using Star Wars themed icons. "Fortuna" worked perfectly as The Force. Instead of throwing spears, pilots would be shooting blasters or tossing tools as in the movie.
Part of the fun in retheming is using a different theme that still "works". There were no caltrops in Podracing but as they caused minor damage, I decided to make Tusken Raider tokens as they do fire on the racers in the movie.
Lastly were the player boards. I didn't want to repaint the Podracers so I could not use the games’ colours to identify player boards. Instead, I used pics of each pilot from a Google search and I took pics of each podracer micro machine and married them together on a redone player board. This was laser printed and laminated. This was also done for the lap counters which also included a screenshot of the lap counter from the movie as well as each of their flags.
One problem I encountered was that in the YouTube video, the additional rock pieces were completely saturated with ink whereas only some areas were darkened on the desert surface. In my case, the ink darkened the rocks too much. So I went over them with light brown and reapplied the highlights. Everything is fixable!
... and finally after retouches:
Final Thoughts
The point of this article is to hopefully encourage others to give this side hobby a try. It doesn't matter if there are mistakes visible. No one will be looking at those. It's the idea and the passion you put into it that matters. It's personalizing a game you enjoy.
This project was completed over 3 days (a lot of waiting for paint to dry) plus an additional 30 minutes for retouching the rocks.
I'm still playing around with crowd standees and I am in the process of removing the Podracer's bottom wheel trays, but overall embellishing/retheming this game has been a lot of fun. Overall, this project was completed over 3 days (a lot of waiting for paint to dry) plus an additional 30 minutes for retouching the rocks.
My track is a lot longer than the original oval but more in keeping with the Podracing feel on Tatooine from the movie. It's ready for testing.
Update
The Micromachine toy for the stands/start finish line just arrived (May 9th) so I cut it apart and added “rocks” to hide the cut seams. I also cut apart the start/finish “bridge” so that I could extend it to cross my 3 lane track. The rocks and parts of the toy was repainted to match the track. For the racers, I removed the wheel trays and made custom standees to place each Podracer at different heights and slight angles.
... and here is the final look!
Finally: Podracer! the board game.
About Our Guest Contributor Game Cows
Les Cheung is a graphic designer whose interests include a wide range of history, film, science fiction, fantasy, music and cooking. Above all, Les loves board games.
He provided design work for four board game projects for WizKids, and has donated graphics and signage to many people, board game conventions and stores. He previously volunteered for the Toronto Area Boardgaming Society (TABS) and organized their presence at Fan Expo Canada, and The Game and Hobby Show.
Along with his wife, Les hosts an annual board game day for friends and family.
Les is also a play-tester, rethemer, board game miniature painter, and “Kluntje King” Hall of Fame embellisher on BoardGameGeek (BGG). He has also uploaded dozens of files for fellow BGGers to download and print.
Les was surprised for one of his rethemes to make Sam Healey’s list for the Dice Tower’s Top Ten Board Game Experiences of 2019: Number 9! (at the 11:29 mark)