Card Racks

Gamebot,

You could try to get them straight from the source. I.E. Contact Fantasy flight and tell them you'd like to purchase an extra set of card racks from Ingenious. They have wonderful customer support. I once lost some pieces from one of my FFG games and they sent me spares for free. Great company, so it's a good bet they'll do it.

Good luck!
-Darke

You could clone them with paper maché. There's a few ways to do this – I'll start with the most outrageous way. You'll need two Ingenious racks, Vaseline or other petroleum jelly, and paper maché pulp. Slather the outside of one rack with Vaseline and squash it into the second rack to slather the inside of the second rack with vaseline. Coat the first rack with and even layer of paper maché pulp, press it gently into the second rack to smooth and form it, then remove it from the second rack. Let it dry for a while, then remove it from the first rack.

You could do the same thing without pressing it into the first rack – just smooth the surface with your fingers or a spoon's back. You could also just use normal paper maché or plaster strips. I've used plaster strips and Vaseline several times to make casts of faces and to make masks.

You could pour quick-setting model plaster into the racks and make plaster casts of the racks. They'd be heavy and a little dense, but it's be quick and easy. Remember the Vaseline to make it easy to remove the casting!

A far-out idea: Leather. Leather that's ~1/5th inch thick is pretty stiff, but can be cut fairly easily. The nifty thing in that if you spray it with rubbing alcohol it becomes very pliable. Imagine a rectangle of leather that's as wide as you want the rack to be (10 inches?), and as high as the total surface length of an Ingenous rack measured from the bottom front edge to the bottom back edge. What I mean is imagine a flea walking in a straight line over the rack, from the front to the back. Even though the distance on the table from the front of the rack to the back is only 1.5 inches, the flea travels up 1/2 inch, down 1/4 inch, up 2 inches, and down 2.25 inches, for a total of 5 inches. Right. So, imagine a 5 inch by 10 inch rectangle of 1/5th inch thick leather. Now spray it with alcohol and crimp & fold it to match the contours of the tile rack you want.

Given what I know about your game, almost any of these material choices compliment the theme nicely. For that matter, it's not that hard to work with sheet metal in the sizes you want to work with, and you can get it relatively cheap at Home Depot or Lowes. It's relatively easy to cut it and get straight bends. You just need to make the edges safe. A fully folded crimp is time-consuming without exactly the right tools.

Yeah, I too advocate using Murphy's Law to your own advantage at every possible occasion. Murphy's Law: it's power can be used for good as well as bad.

-Darke