A few months back I found a Jenga box - that fun game that's played by making a tower out of wooden blocks, where players take turns removing on block from the stack and placing onto the top, without causing it to topple. Ahh, fun times. Well, my family already has a Jenga, so I had to find a different use for it.
Sounds like a good opportunity to practice my Technopague again :-D
I started searching though my extensive catalogue of papercraft templates, and found the perfect pattern: Dave Graffam's Spaceport Crates Print-and-Build Terrain Kit. Now Daves kit - actually all Dave's kits - is top notch. Full of variation and inclusive of layered pdfs*. Unfortunately, this kit wasn't exactly right for the Jenga set's wooden blocks. Some time ago I purchased some desktop publishing/design software that has proven very useful over the years. Using the software, I was able to manipulate the pdfs papercraft patterns/templates to create wraps for each Jenga block. Truth be told, it took me many hours to get the dimensions 'just right', but it's not like I'm doing this stuff on any timetable, so that didn't matter. There were one or two prototypes and adjustments made too - all in an attempt to get the job done without looking too shite.
The pattern I ended up with allowed me to print 4 wraps to an A4 page, so it only took me a dozen or so to get the whole box of blocks done.
I used a safety blade and straight edge to slice up the wraps, back edged (most of) the wraps sides (which is a great tip for any papercraft project if you can be bothered), and glued them around the blocks. I used Modge Podge again which is a lot better than PVA for these type of projects - if you're going to try it yourself, remember that it should be used sparingly - a thin coat is all that's required to get the paper adhering to the block.
After all the wraps were applied, I then gave the blocks another layer of Modge Podge on the outside to protect them during game play. I have a gloss bottle at present, so I sprayed a Matt Varnish onto them as well.
I am quite happy with the end result: it's easy to scatter and stack the blocks onto the table, and their weight and dimensions makes them perfect for 28mm gaming. If I was to start this sort of project from scratch, I'd try and hunt down some blocks with different dimensions e.g., 1x1x3" - that way they could be stacked that little bit more realistically and neatly.
Once I'd finished with the blocks I decided I needed something to keep them in... How about the box that they came with!? Duh! I had the brilliant idea a while back of converting my carrying boxes etc into terrain items too, so this was another opportunity to try my hand at that. I went back to my softwared and resized some full size A4 sheets to use as a wrap for the box. Look, it wasn't/isn't perfect (some of my dimensions weren't quite right etc) however on a gaming table it's hardly the sort of thing that is going to stand out. The nice thing about such projects is, if it really annoys me, or if I really need something to do, I can always come back and redo the box's wrap too.
