Classic Dungeonbowl pitch. Moor pitch Feb 18th 2013

[Olaf the Stout]

The simple solution for the chests is to write with a marker (or paint with a brush) a number on the underside of each chest. Then, at the start of each round, mix each set of 6 chests up so you don't know which number is which and place them on the board (not looking at the number on the bottom of each chest).

You then roll a d6. Whatever number comes up is the chest that has the ball. If you open a chest with any other number then you find a bomb.

Alex, who created the massive dungeon you would have seen in Bl!tz Magazine has used that method at both his DungeonBowl touraments and there have been no problems. He actually has a letter and a number under his chests, so sometimes you are looking for a number, and sometimes you are looking for a letter. but I think just a number is fine.

Olaf the Stout

[Steam Ball]

If they have any shape or paint differences, it will be a matter of time and visual memory (skills instead of the intended luck). OK, you may say they have to learn 6 now... but that will be for a perfect rush around the dungeon. If you can learn 2, and the dice rolls one of the other 4, you already know which 2 to avoid.

[yggdrasil]

The pillars and chests both look great! I might just have to make some pillars for my dungeon now too. Are you going to get any statues?

I also agree with the problems about gluing specific numbers or effects to the bottom of each chest. You don't want players to be carefully examining the chests during the game so they can try and work out which one is the one they want. Rather than pulling a token out of a bag, we tend to just roll a dice when a chest is opened - but pulling a random token might actually be more fun.

[the solitaire]

Yeah, I decided for randomly pulling a token out of a bag will work best. 6 chests, 12 tokens consisting of 2 ball tokens and 10 boom tokens.

I´m not yet sure whether I´ll have custom plastic Dungeonbowl tokens made, or if I´ll just buy grinded stone tokens in 2 different colours.

Another option would be to use 14mm beads like these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-8-10-12-14-16 ... 2ec2ece997

And yet another option is to use 2 different colours of dice in a bag. Or glass squares or something similar.

Progress is being made, and I also started to drybrush the walls for some additional contrast, and to brighten up the whole dungeon a little.

I´ll make sure ot post progress pictures really soon. Hopefully I´ll manage to get another dungeon tile done by tomorrow. All the brick carving is done for that tile, it just needs paint now

[Olaf the Stout]

If they have any shape or paint differences, it will be a matter of time and visual memory (skills instead of the intended luck). OK, you may say they have to learn 6 now... but that will be for a perfect rush around the dungeon. If you can learn 2, and the dice rolls one of the other 4, you already know which 2 to avoid.

At the tournament all the chests are painted the same. So long as you're relatively careful, it isn't that hard to get them looking close to the same. As for the shape, if you use the Hirst Arts chests they should all be the same shape (assuming there is no miscasts).

The tournament also has multiple dungeon tables. So if you're able to memorise multiple sets of chests you're doing well. So if you're that concerned about people memorising the chests, have multiple sets of them and randomise which set is used each time.

On top of that, don't roll a dice to see what number chest the ball is under until the fist chest is turned over. So, even if you know what chest is #2, you don't know until you open it whether #2 is the ball chest or a bomb chest.

Honestly, though I don't think there are that many people so observant and keen to cheat that they will remember every little difference in 6 similar looking chests.

Olaf the Stout

[yggdrasil]

At the tournament all the chests are painted the same. So long as you're relatively careful, it isn't that hard to get them looking close to the same. As for the shape, if you use the Hirst Arts chests they should all be the same shape (assuming there is no miscasts).

If you're not having any problems with it, that's good. I'm sure you can paint the chests very carefully so it's very hard to tell them apart. Personally I'd just feel paranoid that the chests might have tiny differences that I can't pick out myself but others can, like if they get tiny bits of paint chipping or something. I don't expect most players to actually try and memorise the chest differences, but they might notice it anyway, and once something is seen it can be difficult to unsee.

I just remembered though that in our games, we only actually roll dice to see which chest has the ball when it's a multi-ball game. When it's a normal single-ball game, we just use the original double-sided tokens, and just place the model chests on top of the tokens as a 3D representation of the chest on the token. That way we both get the ball/boom graphic illustrations of the tokens, but also get to use model chests that can be as different as they want since they are not tied to the randomness of chest content.

[the solitaire]

using the tokens was something I originally considered, but since I found such nice chests I figured I might as well try and find something that feels nice to the touch to use for the other required tokens.

That´s where the gemstones and a nice leather pouch came to mind. I might play around a bit with water effects later on to make some teleporter tokens, or I might end up ordering those. Translucent clear blue and nicely numbered does sound nice

Small update: It had to happen. It always happens during terrain projects. First blood!

(open link at own risk. Not for the faint of heart )
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96/th ... 14_573.jpg

When quickly (that´s always when it happens) opening a can of enamel the screwdriver I used to pop off the lid lost hold of said lid and buried itself in my hand...


... twice

[Olaf the Stout]

At the tournament all the chests are painted the same. So long as you're relatively careful, it isn't that hard to get them looking close to the same. As for the shape, if you use the Hirst Arts chests they should all be the same shape (assuming there is no miscasts).

If you're not having any problems with it, that's good. I'm sure you can paint the chests very carefully so it's very hard to tell them apart. Personally I'd just feel paranoid that the chests might have tiny differences that I can't pick out myself but others can, like if they get tiny bits of paint chipping or something. I don't expect most players to actually try and memorise the chest differences, but they might notice it anyway, and once something is seen it can be difficult to unsee.

I just remembered though that in our games, we only actually roll dice to see which chest has the ball when it's a multi-ball game. When it's a normal single-ball game, we just use the original double-sided tokens, and just place the model chests on top of the tokens as a 3D representation of the chest on the token. That way we both get the ball/boom graphic illustrations of the tokens, but also get to use model chests that can be as different as they want since they are not tied to the randomness of chest content.

I found the Hirst Arts chests all come out identical, unless for some reason you have issues with bubbles in the plaster (I've never had much issue with the chests, they generally come out perfect). So the actual casts themselves look exactly the same.

In regards to the painting, I know Alex (the TO for the DungeonBowl tournament) painted them pretty quickly and they are still very, very difficult to tell apart. I'm guessing you may be able to if you put them all next to each other and studied them to try and find differences in the paint jobs (i.e. Chest 1 has a slightly lighter colour due to being drybrushed more). In reality though, the chests are almost never together. They are spread all across the board, so spotting the difference between any 2 chests is not easy.

We had about 12 players at the first tournament and 20 at the one this year and no-one brought up the issue of being able to spot which specific chest was which. So I think it is a non-issue that is not worth worrying about too much.

Olaf the Stout

[the solitaire]

I played a first small game of Dungeonbowl on the board today, after assembling the 4th dungeon tile.

I used 6 chests and placed them on the DB chest tokens which worked fine. As a final solution I did just order a leather pouch:



and 20mm diameter round beads in 2 colours

10 turquoise beads and 2 mahogani obsidian beads. Both types are round and polished and all beads have roughly the same weight so it will be near impossible to "feel out" the right ones.















Since the game was played out on only 4 tiles and the endzones, I decided to not use any teleporters bthis time around.

I also might decide to leave the pillar tile the way it is rather then adding walls to it. It played really nice opened up like this.

[Axtklinge]

Looks great!

[the solitaire]

Thnx, working on tile #5 at the moment.

I´ll post more pictures when tile #5 and #6 are at the stage the other 4 dungeon tiles are at.

I´ll also start adding detail to the 4 tiles I already have. I´m at the point now where the board no longer fits in one cardboard box. I guess in the new year I will start building the transport box for this game board.

I´m still trying to figure out the best way to secure the tiles in the transport box, but these are sturdy enough to secure them between layers of felt lined plywood.

[yggdrasil]

That game looks fantastic! I agree that it seems unnecessary to add walls to the pillar room.

Now you just need painted miniatures - preferably in dungeonbowl colours.

[the solitaire]

That´s my human and ork teams. The orks are 90% painted. The humans just came in with the mail last week.

They will be painted in the Pittsburgh Steelers paintscheme, and I´ll have to write up some background and find a suitable team name to have them represent an Averland BloodBowl team Not sure on the details yet.

The idea behind Averland was that I want to repaint my halfings and this way I can use the same paintscheme there, as well as on my Ogres. I agree, it would be a lot of mini´s in black and yellow, but I have a feeling that this might work out to my advantage when fielding them as a human/halfling/ogre dungeonbowl team.

[the solitaire]

I managed to build 2 more dungeon tiles.

This brings the total to 6 dungeon tiles (the ones with the layout from the original Dungeonbowl game) and 2 endzones.



As can be seen in the picture, there was a good reason to have the walls around the pillar hall. That means 8 more wall sections to do

Also, there is a small difference in colour between the first tile I made and the later ones. I added some enamel to this tile to tie the tiles together a little more.

I will also add another tutorial, explaining the process of painting walls using texture spray.

Tools of the trade:
-Styrofoam wall segments
-PVA glue
-Styrofoam basecoat
-Grey spraypaint
-Texture spraypaint
-Wood enamel
-A soft large enough brush
-Water

Step 1) After texturising your wall segments, as described in my previous tutorial, glue them together using PVA glue.

Step 2) when the PVA glue sets, you can open up your can of styrofoam compatible basecoat and coat the wall segments. I picked a fast drying basecoat, so by the time I coated all 4 segments I could continue right away with the grey paint.
The grey is mainly used to cover up any pen/marker markings and is just cheaper then the styrofoam basecoat I use.



Step 3) after the basecoat is completely dry, I applied watered down wood enamel to darken the recessed areas in the wall segments.


Apply liberally, and best leave this to dry overnight

Watered down the wood enamel doesn´t want to adhere to the basecoat, so your walls won´t look anywhere near nice at this stage. No need to worry though.



After the watered down wood enamel dried you can apply the texture spraypaint. The can advises at least 2 layers, better still 3 to cover the area with an opaque layer of textured paint. I found that 3 layers obscures the detail you carve in the foam. 2 layers is pushing it but 1 is too thin.



The texture spray needs several hours to set. After its dry you can apply more watered down wood enamel (less water then the previous layer applied before the textured paint though)

Due to the textured paint the wood enamel now nicely adheres to the walls.

[Virral]

Looks great, I love the effect youve.managed to acheive with the styrofoam and spraypaint.

Any chance you could share the brands youre using? Not that I expect them to be available locally but it would help for finding a suitable.local alternative