Board Game Bling

Gold, Gems, Wood, Ore! Resources you Need! ©Stonemeier Games

I’ve been called superficial before in regards to my board game taste. What can I say, I like something easy on the eyes, with a little sparkle and that lingers in the memory long after I’ve tallied up my victory points. Some publishing companies produce draw dropping components, like those seen in our Blood Rage preview, but others could do with a little extra to add some flair to your game table. While many mechanically excellent games are beloved by those who have taken the time to get to know their rules and deep rewarding interactions, there are hundreds more who never see the table because of their homely looks. Thankfully there are a wealth of options of additional accessories that you can pimp your games with. Take a look at the following Xibit’s:

I don’t even own any Warhammer Conquest Decks, but I want those sleeves ©FFG

There’s something cathartic about sleeving cards. While we can have a thorough debate in the comments section as to whether you should or shouldn’t bother to sleeve your cards, I want us to look at accessories that make you cards stand out. Fantasy Flight Games stock some of the best card sleeves in the industry, but specifically they supply custom backed sleeves which can be added to their specific big name properties. Netrunner Jinteki decks look ominious sheathed inside of Snare backed cards, your warmonger House Stark deck snaps at the table with its Dire Wolf emblems and words escape me when I see the fury on the faces of the Space Marine card sleeves for Warhammer 40k. Complimenting your LCG decks, storing your cards in Ultra Pro Towers makes them easy to carry around and includes space for game tokens. Lastly, custom play mats round off the the experience with a surface to showcase your deck builds and make sure your sleeved cards don’t slide off the table.

Beautiful Wooden Die that appear to be carved from magical wood ©Artisan Dice

Who doesnt like rolling dice? We’ve seen in comments in our articles that some players are drawn in by the siren songs of lady luck more than the abacus calculations of trading in the Mediterranean. Despite probability odds calculated by MIT graduates confirming that you have identical probabilities of rolling snake eyes with a set of plastic dice than with metal dice forged in the pits of hell fire adorned with marble flame indents, one just feels more satisfying. Many RPG players tend to have more “intimate” relationships with their die through practices like punishing them in freezers and training them to roll crits by placing them highest side up. But not all dice seem worthy of your care or attentions, so its not unusual for people to acquire sets of beautifully crafted die, such as these from Artisan Dice. Wooden dice of exotic timber, stone dice mined far below the surface or forged steel all feature for the dice connoisseur from this supplier and you cant help but feel the odds may be more in your favour when these are in your palm. Keeping dice together is another job, and dice towers or trays do the job in a rolling frenzy. Wyrmwood Gaming recently kickstarted some amazing dice towers that are magnetically assembled for easy transportation and you can also order a wonderful magnetic dice box to match your tower.

Cardboard tokens more than often simply tick the “necessary” box in the wardrobe department of your gaming box. Often clustered to indicate wealth or how powerful your rule is in relation to others victory points, you’d be forgiven for feeling a little underwhelmed by the chits of yellow cardboard in front of you. No one was ever afraid of a commander leading a force of red and blue cubes down the riverbanks nor did they cast their eyes in envy over your flat pile of wood and stone resources. Great online stores like Meeple Source offer you warriors for your Lords of Waterdeep, or wooden red hearts to symbolise your won affections in Love Letter. If you recently read our Kickstarter article you would have heard me sing the praises of Stonemeier Games, who have produced amazing treasure chests of resources that can be introduced as assets in all your table gaming and bring the realism of resources to the table.

A tower worthy of your dice, to stand on the battlefield of the table! ©Wyrmwood Gaming

It’s difficult to not sound like a salesman bellowing through the loudspeaker labelled “corporate cash flow” when talking about these products because they are not necessary at all. Nor can one substantiate any evidence that owning any of these extras will increase your enjoyment of your gaming experiences. Extra accessories are a very personal thing. They are a way of differentiating your games from another players, much in the same way a petrol head will change the bulbs of his headlights or add that extra racing stripe or rear wing. In recently printing out Valeria: Card Kingdoms I had to source my own components and started down a rabbit hole of options. Using blue acrylic glass pieces for magic shards and old 1c pieces for currency, I soon realised how higher quality board game pieces could quickly cause the already expensive hobby prices in South Africa to skyrocket. However, while saying this, I love the way adding some of these extras injects a little “more” into my gaming collection. I’m happy to bring out my tuck boxes for Suburbia and I still adamantly refuse to roll the boring white Summoner Wars dice in favour of my blood red numeral ones I replaced them with.

So what have you done that has added a little something to your gaming collection? Whether its replacing dice, changing the standard storage or sleeved over 1000 cards, let us know what you’ve done and more importantly your thoughts on gaming accessories and whether they have changed the way you view your games or the hobby.