I've made quite a few cork-board maps, in fact it probably makes up the majority of my machine's output.
So when me and a friend got talking about how long it was since we'd played Risk, I decided to put my expertise to use and cut my own Risk board out of cork.
For those who haven't heard of it 'Risk' (or 'Stratego') is a world domination board game, you have several units and use them to protect your own territories and attack others, the outcomes of these battles are decided by dice rolls. The goal is to expand your empire until you have defeated all the other players
I did a fair bit of research about all the different versions, and the standard game size, then began drawing up the parts as usual.
The pieces come out of the machine like this, I put vinyl over the areas where the text was engraved so that I could paint the letters. The machine cuts a stencil as it's engraving, although not perfect I've had quite good success with this technique before, but never with such small text.
To finish the pieces, I stencil the letters in black, add on any islands with stiff wire, and then stain the whole continent its proper colour. I think I would have preferred them left unstained, but once I'd done one I had to do the others as well.
I could have left it there and gone out and bought the other parts, but I got the idea in my head to make my own dice.
I have some scavenged door panels lying around that appeared to be made of solid mahogany, so I cut a strip off and began by machining a flat on both sides.
Once it was flat and laminar I measured it then had my mill cut out several perfect cubes.
This is my first attempt at multi sided machining, the main problem of which is lining your pieces up when you flip them over.
Seeing as I had 5 dice each with 6 sides I needed a way to perfectly line up each side and relatively quickly.
I decided to machine a hole the exact size of the dice, this way I just have to push each blank die into the slot and hit go, then I just switch to a new die nice and quickly and go again.
It still took me over an hour to do all the dice, but once they were finished I was really happy with them.
All that was left was to print out some cards, get some pieces. I'm using map pins, which I think is a significant improvement over the original because you're not always knocking your army over. I managed to find three different types of coloured pins to use as the 1, 5 and 10 units. But because they don't take up as much space you could easily just use lots of ones.
The cards were a rush job, thrown together with google images in InDesign. I would have liked to mill some lino prints and stamp the cards that way, but I doubt I'll get round to it now.
The actual game progressed as it always does, I overreach, then am quickly crushed into a small corner, where I hide while the other two duke it out. (I'm yellow, both figuratively and literally)
Overall I think it was a pretty successful game, the only complaint was that it was a bit awkward fishing around in the box of pins to find the right one, they asked for a subdivided box, but I though a scrap of cork on which you could organise your units would work just as well.
Next I fancy having a go at a settlers of Catan game, but whipping out all my old Warhammer scenery stuff to make the board.
