Dale Yu: Bits, Bits and more great Bits!

So, while I’ve been re-organizing my game closet, I’ve been trying to peek inside each game – especially the children’s games!  Why?  Well, over the years, I’ve maintained a little box of lost-and-found game bits.  It currently has about 30 assorted counters, chits, dobbers, meeples and dice. 

I’ve always felt that I was pretty good at recognizing different game bits from games.  In fact, there is an informal contest each year to see who can identify the most lost bits at the Gathering of Friends lost-and-found table.  However, there are a few bits to kids games that I just can’t place. 

The problem is that there have been a lot of games that have come and gone through my house in the past few years.  First, kids games have a somewhat short shelf life in the house.  Many kids games are targeted to a specific age range (generally no more than 2 or 3 years in duration) – and once the kids pass the upper limit, they will be too advanced for the game.  As such, the game then gets to move on to someone else’s home or perhaps Goodwill.  Second, I generally host the local game group – and when people come over – they often bring plenty of their own games to play.  While I try to make sure that no one is missing any bits when I find a new one under the couch, it’s still hard to know for sure what games have even been in the house.  Finally, having recently counted all of my games, it’s just impossible to remember what the bits look like in 1,100 different games.

The other “bit” that I purged from the game closet was my collection of sprues – you know, those cardboard sheets that once held all of your nicely punched counters when your game was still shrinkwrapped!  In the past, I used to just toss out those extra pieces of cardboard thinking that they were just garbage.  Then, once I started to have children, I kept them around because they made interesting tracing templates for the kids to use for their artwork and their projects. I used to keep stacks of them in the game closet for the kids to use whenever they needed.

More recently, I’ve started to save the sprues for different reasons.  First, I’ve found it very helpful to take the sprues and place them underneath the box insert.  In many games, adding the box sprues to the bottom of the box will bring the insert flush to level of the box cover.  When this happens, there isn’t much room for the bits to move around, and this helps keep all of the components in their appropriate place in the insert.  Additionally, as I’ve started to work on more and more games, I’ve found that it’s very useful to have around bits of sturdy cardboard to make new counters from (or replacement bits for chits that had somehow gone missing).

This plan would be much better if I had taken the OCD route of scanning all of my counter sheets before they were punched – but I just don’t have the time and desire to do that… I know of a few people who are driven enough to do this, and I’m sure that their replacement pieces (if needed) would be much better than anything I could cobble together.

Anyways, here is a picture of the bits I can’t seem to place.  Does anyone know where I should put them?  (I apologize for the blurry picture - I’ll fix it as soon as I can!)

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

© 2008 Dale Yu

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Comments:

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Hey, Dale, where’s the picture?  Up until I read, “here is a picture,” I was thinking, “Dang, I wish he’d put a picture up - that would be a fun challenge.” Now it seems like that was your intent, but perhaps it got lost in the rollout.  Tease! Posted by Nathan Morse on May 14, 2008 at 05:47 AM | #

Nathan, I love technology sometimes. Anyways, I only had a blurry picture and I was going to hold off until I can get a better one… But I’m at work now, so a better picture isn’t possible.  So, I put back up the blurry pic. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on May 14, 2008 at 07:39 AM | #

The cat looks like the one from Viva Topo. The bunny looks very familiar, but it isn’t coming to me. I’ve got nothing for the other two pieces. Can you add a top down shot? Posted by David Lund on May 14, 2008 at 09:23 AM | #

I thought it was the Viva Topo cat myself… Of course, my copy of Viva Topo has a cat in it already—which I am not entirely sure is the right one! Sigh—when I get home, I’ll get better pictures taken dale Posted by Dale Yu on May 14, 2008 at 09:25 AM | #

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