For a friend's Ark Nova game, I 3D printed and painted some pieces folks have uploaded to Thingiverse, including: white pavillions and a coffee break mug, grey rocks and kiosks, a black reptile house, a clear aviary and a red/brown petting zoo. The pavillions and petting zoo were modified a little for better printing and durability.
Battlestar Galactica allowed 6 players, which is a minimum I like, but it included more player cards so I upgraded it to handle up to 8 players. I experimented with new loyalty cards, but the extra complexity didn't help, so I just went with simple cards and a new loyalty chart. One thing I noticed is that players getting "you are not a cylon" cards didn't look at them long, whereas those receiving the cylon cards did (more to read) - giving away who's the cylon. To even that out, I added text to all the "You are not a cylon" cards so everyone had something to read and include a minimum 20sec read rule. The second phase cards are a different color and are always the same regardless of number of players so you have one less deck to setup at the start. I 3D printed new basestars and painted the vipers and raptors.
The Buffy board game uses cards to pass skill checks. I created a 6 sided symbol die (3D print file) instead to make this simpler. The game also includes stands for all the characters but just one for the "Big Bad"s. I made extra stands (3D file) for all the Big Bads, and in a different colour so they're easier to distinguish on the board. The vampire and demon tokens also look very similar when flipped to the "stunned" side, so I printed a set of demon heads that could be used to differentiate them instead - fortunately they can sit upside down too for when they're stunned. For fun, some 3D garlic pieces were also printed. The game uses a generic token for the monsters of the week, but I printed up a full set of them instead. I also replaced the clues tokens with Mario cubes.
Burgle Bros should be playable with one or two extra players if they start on the 2nd level. For now I've just updated a few pieces with 3D printed versions: the cat, the crow and the blown up hallways.
Sid Meier's Civilization had a bad layout for 3 players (no even way to split the continents), so I modified the map with a leaf (map1,map2 ) that can fold out of the way when not needed. It allows Austrafica to be a supercontinent roughly the same size as America and Eurasia, to make starting regions more balanced for 3 or 6 player games. I also didn't like that the artillery pieces were shared across eras, so I created a Ballista (carved and molded) to replace the Catapult as eras change. Other rules were simplified and made into a reference sheet for each player to have. I also added zombie and Stargate expansion sets. The sets include a Zombies expansion (which can double as a 7th player) and a Stargate expansion with replicators, goa'uld, a pyramid and of course Stargates with rules to govern their appearance and actions.
Doctor Who: Time Of The Daleks
The "Doctor Who: Time Of The Daleks" game comes with only 4 of the doctors (1, 4, "11" (Smith) and "12" (Capaldi)), a 4 player limit, and was missing some cards: Captain Jack (who's in the instructions) and Tegan Jovanka (who's linked with included companions). So, I improved it by adding 3 doctors: Eighth Doctor / (McGann), War Doctor / (Hurt) and "10" / (Tennant) and their respective companions: Dr. Grace Holloway, The Moment and Donna Noble and the missing Captain Jack and Tegan Jovanka cards, and I decided to add a Jackson Lake and a Rose Tyler too. I made spares of the turn and dice cards for the extra players. For the "10" and "11" I had some minifigures I used for the game pieces, and 3D printed a War Doctor and an extra Tardis for each of the new doctors. I found the rules complex for a dice rolling game, so simplified the regeneration process and created a reference sheet with an even simpler version of the game, as well as the "beginner" and full version instructions.
You can't have a Dune game without sandworms, so I added them in using the existing Insight cards for 4-7x swords.
I just replaced the climate and 1st player markers with a 3D printed wooly mammoth and a T-Rex (from my Jurassic Park game).
Firefly is limited to 4 players, so I added 2 more ships (molded and cast, but there are 3d print files out there too) and ship cards (printed and glued to a board) for them: Rese and Riser. For fun, I also 3D printed some items: Fuel, parts, passengers & cargo, unhappy crew (angry emoji), goals & warrants. To make it simpler to teach, I condensed the rules to a one page reference sheet.
I got The Lost World Jurassic Park Game from a friend, and it had slight damage to the flimsy cardboard buildings, so I removed the faulty roofs, and reinforced the structures with 3D printed inserts. The people and chopper were originally just cardboard figures, and the T-Rex was not to scale with the raptors, so I replaced them all with new 3D versions. The people are now Lego minifigures, the chopper and T-rex are from the dollar store. I also added sound to the main building (to have the T-Rex roar any time the dinos eat a human), and to the heli-pad (to have Arnold Schwarzenegger say, "Get to the choppa!" any time a human makes it to the heli-pad.
The Lords Of Hellas game I bought only allows 4 players, but came with a bonus hero, Odysseus, so I used that as a starting point for making a 5th player expansion using 3d print pieces from Pocket-Tactics and Animal Crossing 3D print sets. The board also came with 4 spots for monuments but only 3 included so I made a 4th for that out of a Poseidon model and then 5th for the expansion out of a Colossus model. I also used some 3D print pieces to replace the cardboard temples & Delphi, and add 3D Sparta & regular cities, though these are available now: Delphi & Terrain Expansion. I also modified JosoNL's Quest Mountain to be compatible with my 5th player expansion (sleeved cards due to extra monster & extra quest slot). Since the game doesn't need the 3rd quest slot (heroes return to their region of origin), my Quest Mountain uses that space for storage of extra quests, hit dice, and I and added a few more slots to hold monster cards and artifacts.
I just replaced the cardboard and cheap plastic figures with ones that were a little cooler. The main characters and tailed beasts are mostly sets from China. The baddies are mostly a mix of lego minifigs and 3D printed parts. It's a little crowded (those are the smallest sizes I could get), but worth it.
I got a cheap used Operation (R2D2 version) game, but of course, it was missing a few pieces and battery acid had corroded the battery terminals. It also didn't have an on/off switch which is a bad design as the battery is hard to get to (under a screw)... so, I made the missing pieces using 3d printing on models extruded from images of the pieces, and replaced the 4AA battery compartment with a 5AA version (for rechargeable battery compatibility) with a switch.
The Photosynthesis board game only allows 4 players, but I created an extra player mat and tree (Palm) set for a 5th player. The rule of blocking all production from a tree when it is only partly shaded by its neighbour seems odd so I modified it so that production is only slowed down by as much as a tree is shadowed at a 45 degree slant: Eg. A size 3 tree casts a size 2 shadow 1 space away, a size 1 shadow 2 spaces away and no shadow beyond that. So, a size 2 tree in a size 1 shadow only produces 1 photosynthesis. More Examples
Star Trek Catan is limited to 4 players, and all are Federation, battling each other. That seemed odd, so I replaced them with 2 Federation (science red vs. military white) and added: blue Vulcans, black Klingons, green Romulans, brown Ferengi and grey Jem'Hadar. Some were molded and cast, some were 3D printed - see below for related files. The Vulcan ships were made with a bead and 1/2 a toothpick. I also replaced the Klingon (robber) with Borg Sphere & added an extra row of planets and two border expansion pieces to accommodate the extra players. The Support Cards slow the game with folks re-reading what was available so I took out the bad ones, and randomly give one to each player at the start (they're double use with no exchanges). We also ended up adopting some house rules: rolling a 7 doesn't allow you to take a card, it just moves the borg; your second placed ship doesn't have to be next to your second placed outpost (first outpost or first ship are ok). Some friends had the Federation Space Map pack, and wanted it improved, so I moved one of the trading bases to make their locations uniform, and cut the maps so they can be combined into one supermap. It plays well with the original rules so you can ignore the other "features" of that expansion pack.
3D printed parts: Ferengi Ship & Base, Klingon Base, Klingon Ships, Klingon Ship Stands, Romulan Ships, Jem'Hadar Ships, Extra Bases.
Star Wars Carcassone is limited to 5 players, or 2 teams of 2 and 1 team of 1 - that seemed odd, so I added a 6th group, Jawas, to make it 3 teams of 2 or 6 players. The Jawas join the bounty hunter group (they are the bounty hunters of droids, and both groups work for anyone if the money is good). The extra blue meeples were 3D printed. I also replaced the larger meeples with mini figures, painted their bases to match their faction and gave each team their own coloured dice.
I printed playmats and game tiles for Terraforming Mars from various playsets.
For Thunder Road, I 3D printed the terrain tiles, ramps, and an extra player - for use with a staggered launch (1 vehicle in the 1st round, two in the second, 3 in the third)
For Ticket To Ride, I 3D printed a 6th grey player and a Godzilla & Alien expansion.
For Wingspan, I 3D printed turn move markers that are birds, with each color matching an associated egg.
All images copyright Rob Emery
