I thought that I would try and make a dice tower of of foamboard like the one seen at Instructables, but once I cut out the pieces, I realized how silly it was that I wasn’t just making it out of wood. The foamboard was a pain to cut and it seemed silly to go into all of that post-construction work just to make the outside look good.

I decided just to design my own tower using some craft wood, making the cuts with my compound miter saw. The basswood I bought was inexpensive and is a nice light soft wood with a fine straight grain. I got a couple of planks that were 3/16″ x 4″ x 24″ for about $8. I also used a piece of scrap trim from a doll house I built a couple of years ago and a piece of adhesive felt I had sitting around.

I kept the design of the dice tower very simple with almost no ornamentation other than the fancy piece of trim from the doll house. I figured if I wanted to get fancy, I would just make another one. The tower is approximately 7″ tall and about 8″ long from back to front. The ledges for the dice to tumble down were made from the leftover cuts from the longer sections, which made it easy to fit everything together when I was gluing it. I thought about using some of the tiny nails I had, but the wood glue holds everything together just fine. I used the adhesive felt to line the tray and the ledges so that it wasn’t so dang loud.

That’s about it. Total time for the project, not including driving to the hobby store and waiting for the glue to dry, was about two hours. It was really great to start a project and finish it in the same day. It made me feel pretty good and got me out of a minor funk that I had fallen into. I was really happy with how it turned out, and I will probably make another one in a few weeks and try and make it fancy. Maybe I’ll put crenellations at the top edge or cut out some small windows if I can figure out an easy way to do that. I’m excited to try and improve upon my design.

Last night I spent at least 116 minutes separating the 345 small wooden blocks that come with Command and Colors: Ancients. I know this because my wife and I were watching The Bourne Ultimatum while I was doing it.

My wife couldn’t understand why it didn’t bother me that I had to do so much preparation in order to play the game. We gamers are an odd lot about things like that. It relaxing to me to go through a game and apply stickers or to spend a few evenings painting miniatures. There is something very relaxing about that kind of careful work.

I got to play Command and Colors: Ancients for the first time about a month ago, and I really enjoyed it. My friend Mike from our weekly gaming group did a great job of teaching me how to play. It’s a great wargame with enough depth to make it really enjoyable, but with a nice mix of luck and streamlined game mechanics to make a scenario playable within an hour or so.

Command and Colors: Ancients is available from Funagain Games.

I tried one and really liked it, so I had another immediately afterward.

I was so jazzed it was just silly, and I mean jazzed in a good way, not in an overly caffeinated jittery soon-to-be bitter and tired kind of way. I was just energized and ready to have some fun.

I don’t have any substance vices of any kind, unless you count Dr. Pepper, but this little can could seriously get me in trouble. Luckily, the price tag is still too high for such a little can.

I had stuck a copy of Family Fluxx in my pocket before we left the house. The Fluxx card game is a quick little filler game that easy to play and great to bring into gatherings where people come and go. The rules of the game and the win conditions are determined by the cards as they are played, and some rules and all goals will replace previously played conditions. It’s a very fluffy little card game, but for the price, I think it’s a great deal. I highly recommend that you grab a Red Bull and a copy of Fluxx and go party.

I remember being very excited about the idea of a podcast when they first started to become easily available. I’m a huge fan of spoken word programing and have a small, but respectable collection of radio dramas and readings, some of which include performances by myself. Long ago in the days of college radio, Gameguy could be heard on the airwaves, spinning actual records and reading actual poetry with all the wit and confidence of a young Anthony Bourdain, complaining about his soup.

Podcasting didn’t immediately appeal to me. There just didn’t seem to be enough out there. I could already hear most of what was available by listening to NPR, which I did and still do. I soon forgot about podcasting and went on about my non-podcasting business.

Once I picked up my iPod Shuffle, and hooked it up to iTunes; however, I discovered that podcasting had grown diverse and mighty, becoming a bloated giant, stumbling around, waiting for some innocent listener to be crushed by ninety minutes of smartly edited doggerel. Now this was something I wanted to explore. I figured there must be some truffles growing somewhere in all of this crap.

I cast my net wide at first, and pulled in everything that sounded interesting. Most of it was, in fact, crap; however, I did find a couple of gaming podcasts worth listening to on a regular basis.

• The Dice Tower is a weekly podcast about tabletop games. This was one of the few gaming podcasts I found that had a good mix of humor and board game geek factor. The podcast has been around for some time now, and has quite a following. I’m starting to work my way backwards as I keep up with the current issue.
• The Instance! is one of the many podcasts dedicated to folks who play World of Warcraft. This one sets itself apart from the others by offering actual information, amusing but tight audio, and by just not sucking in general. If you play WoW, you should give it a listen.

The next edition of the Game Carnival will be posted this week, and I continue to work at becoming unfunkified. Thank you to those friends near and far who have shown such great support.

So what did I do with all that time, while I was heavily medicated? I played World of Warcraft! Now I’ve been playing WoW for a couple of years, but I usually play one evening a week with my friends. If you are not familiar with World of Warcraft or the concept of the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), you basically create a character in an online game world where you interact with monsters and other characters, many of which are controlled by other players like yourself.

World of Warcraft is the eight-hundred pound gorilla of the MMORPGs. I would talk about why it’s the most popular, but I haven’t played any of the other, so I’m not qualified to make a comparison. I think it’s a great game, and obviously about eight million other folks around the planet think so as well. WoW is dangerously addictive, but as long as you keep things in perspective, it’s a lot of fun.

I had been tiring of WoW over the last few months, and I went a couple of months without playing this summer. I just got busy doing other things. A day or so after my surgery I started playing WOW like it was a new game. I had previously only played characters on the side of the Alliance, but this time a created a Blood Elf Mage on the Horde side.

I had a blast doing all the Horde quests. I was able to try new professions, and visit new areas of the game world. It was all new, but at the same time familiar. My previous experience with the game interface allowed me to move through levels quickly and easily.

It was a nice way to relax for a few days. I couldn’t sleep and my head was pounding with pain, but I had this great game to keep me occupied and entertained. Instead of focusing on the fact that someone had been drilling holes in my skull, I was able to focus on saving the Ghostlands from the dreaded trolls of Zeb’Tela, which is much more interesting and fun.

Things are getting back to normal around here, and I imagine my wizard friend here will not be getting a lot of action for a while, but it was really a great way to escape and relax for a while. You might give World of Warcraft a try sometime. They have a free trial offer available, so you have nothing to lose. If you find you like it, look for this guy on the Greymane server, and give me a wave.