Help with home-made playing pieces

I was going to suggest Sculpey, a polymer clay that hardens in the oven, but it sounds like they have to look absolutely identical. Maybe drop by a home improvement store... I'm thinking something like the plastic end caps for some tubes or for the bottoms of chairs or such, or something similar that is open on one end. Drop in your washers and fill with (depending on the material of the piece) hot glue, epoxy, acrylic, or something along those lines. Then label one side with a sticker, a side that's always turned away from the other player.

This, obviously, for playtesting, not for the final product. :)

-- Matthew

sounds like stratego style peices would fit the bill nicely.

You just need to make bases for them with different weights inside.

Glue identical plastic boxes on the bottom of each peice containing one of your weights.

Carl

I would think that it's the key fun part of the game. I can imagine a scale and some form of combat where I place a guy on both sides at the same time as you place a guy on both sides, neither of us seeing each others' numbers. One side will be heavier (or they'll balance), and based on the half of the information you know, you can start compiling information. Over time you'd be able to figure out which pieces were likely which and act accordingly. Assuming it's something like that, it seems pretty clever, but there's no way you could simulate it: the balance would have to actually do its thing because otherwise you'd have to reveal numbers to each other.

Of course, maybe the game's nothing like that. If it's not, let me know so I can make it. ;) j/k

-- Matthew

It won't work because the weight of two boxes won't equal the weight of one box. If your weights are 5 grams and your boxes weigh 3 grams, then two boxes with one weight each will weigh 16 grams and one box with two weights will weigh 13 grams, but they should show up as equal on the scale.

You can do some fiddling with the weight you put in, of course, to make it work (total weight of a "one" box is 10 grams, total weight of a "two" box is 20 grams), but it won't be a simple one-washer vs. two-washers kind of adjustment.

Lead fishing weights cut easily with a knife.

-- Matthew

(Edited to make slightly more sense. Ha.)

It's not impossible, it's just that he's got to take the weight of the boxes into account when adding more weight.

If the boxes weigh 5 grams, then he'd add this much weight to each numbered piece:

1 = 05g = 10g total
2 = 15g = 20g total
3 = 25g = 30g total
4 = 35g = 40g total
5 = 45g = 50g total

Obviously you could go finer or more coarse.

In fact, looking at it, you just need two sizes of weights, one that's the same as the box, we'll call it B, and one that's twice the weight of the box, which we'll call T. Then the weights to go in each box are:

1 = B
2 = BT
3 = BTT
4 = BTTT
5 = BTTTT

etc.

Pretty sure that works fine.

-- Matthew

You could also forget about weighing the boxes at all. Just have each player place a hidden number of "beans" into a cup and place the cup on the scale. Based on the hidden value on the peice. Heaviest cup wins the round/battle/whatever (loses?)

Carl

1. Find hollow rectangular pieces with removable caps. Label the piece on one side with your unit marker, stratego-style.

2. Put a piece on your sensitive digital scale, with the cap removed but also present on the scale. (C'mon, you have a digital scale....)

3. Fill the piece, while it is on the scale, with bearings/sand/whatever, until it reaches your desired weight. Cap it.

4. The piece + the filler = the total desired weight of the unit. No problems for different unit/different number of unit confrontations at all.

Where you can find such a component is another matter.

~Josh

I think it's a lot more than a gimmick if you know the weight of your own pieces but not those of your opponents. If we simply compare one of yours from the board with one of mine and we see that one is heavier than the other then we've both learned something but not necessarily the fine details. If later in the game I compare that piece of yours to a different one of mine and compare the results then I've learned more. If, for example, you defeat others' pieces by attacking them with the identically weighted piece, there'd be a fun deduction and memory element. This type of balance wouldn't compare the weight of one to another along a scale... you'd set it up so that if one piece was 1 point of weight more than the other, that side goes down and hits a stop point. All you'd get is which one is heavier, but not by how much.

An alternative is to always be weighing one of my pieces and one of yours on each side of the balance, with an actual scale built in (variable degrees of weight difference). If we each put a piece on each side and then let the scale go and it show, for example, that the right side (from my perspective) is 2 points heavier than the left, and I can see that I put a 3 on the left and a 6 on the right, then I know that your one on my left is 1 pt heavier than your one on my right (whew). That tells me something interesting, which along with other weighings will allow me to deduce the weights of your pieces.

Etc. Seems like a real game mechanic to me, and something that is pretty elegantly and inexpensively implemented.

-- Matthew