Dale Yu: Pics of the Gaming Tree (Finally)!

Okay, this has been a long time in coming – so long, in fact, that the Gaming Christmas tree has already been packed up for the year and is living in the garage!  However, despite the delay, I hope that you enjoy the newest addition to our holiday decorations!  WARNING: This column may exceed federal guidelines for outgoing links and pictures.  Please read at your own risk!

The backstory: Each November, I head off to tropical Fort Wayne, Indiana for Great Lakes Games.  This year, when I returned, my wife had come up with a surprise for me!  As you may have read in the past, we have recently redone our basement to provide me (and the kids) with a nice space for our toys and games.  The new basement has worked out wonderfully, but it was a bit Spartan in the decorations…

Additionally, our house was part of a charity house tour this year to raise money for a local community center.  Essentially, the tour charged visitors a few bucks to let them walk through six different houses and look at the décor and holiday decorations.  We pretty much had to get the house cleaned up into getting-ready-to-sell-the-house-clean status.  Additionally, we upgraded a lot of our holiday decorations in order to prepare for the tour.  As it turns out, we were also chosen to be in the home section of the Cincinnati Enquirer highlighting the renovations – so we had to get ourselves prettied up as well.  The photoshoot wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, and the article turned out pretty nice.  Sadly, not all of the pictures that were in the print edition made it into the online edition - but the text is the same.

The main Christmas tree was the big change – we graduated from an 8-foot tree to a 15-foot tree.  Luckily, I wasn’t around to help in the construction/setup though there were still some signs of the scaffolding when it was all done.  It’s hard to get a good feel for how big the tree is in real life, but here’s a picture taken from the second story landing in the house.  For reference, the door jambs you see next to the tree are 8.5 feet tall.

The new 15-foot tall tree

But getting back to the original story, the other big change was the new tree in the basement.  My wife had decided to surprise me with a gaming-oriented tree, and I must say it was beautiful – and a huge hit!  There were a few ornaments that she was able to buy from the Internet – but the majority of the things on the tree were devised by herself!  She went out and bought the necessary components and then constructed them by herself – and I thought that nothing good would ever come from her being a Sunday School teacher!

Scrabble 4 – Santa (you can’t have reindeer without Santa!)

Scrabble 5 – (The First) Noel

Scrabble 6 – Let it Snow

Scrabble 7 – My personal ornament since I’m kind of the resident Scrooge of the family

Scrabble 8 - Peace

Scrabble 9 – We have a bilingual tree and it wants to wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of its heart...

In case you’re going to count – yes all of those ornaments were made from a single scrabble set.  I think there were about 12 tiles left over, and you couldn’t really spell much more with AAIIIEOWJXQYY.  Hopefully, my brother doesn’t read this – I was just given a sweet 60th Anniversary Jubilee edition Scrabble set for Christmas, and that set comes with GREEN tiles!  They might make sweet ornaments for next year… But, Scrabble tiles weren’t the only game component used to make ornaments.  All of my Carcassone boxes had been raided to make the other set of ornaments!

Meeple Snowflake

Meeple Christmas Tree

Meeple Candy Canes

Meeple Star

Meeple Santas

Meeple Wreath

Meeple Merry Christmas

Meeple Holly Thingy

Okay, time to admit that I might have taken a bit of literary license.  My boxes of Caracassone were not in fact raided for the tree.  I think that a large order of multicolored meeples was purchased from the fine folks at Meeple People and used for the construction of the ornaments!  All of the other bits and pieces came from Hobby Lobby or Oriental Trading Company.

So is that it? Actually, no – there’s one last part of the tree for this year.  After all, what good is a tree without a train underneath it?  I was trying to figure out what would be the best way to do a train for the tree – and while having a conversation with Keith Blume from FRED Games, it suddenly became clear!  Use the track and locomotives from Railroad Tycoon and some of the colored trains from Ticket to Ride! 

Here’s the tree again with the newly installed train

Closer

Closer still

Choo-choo!

Well, I will admit that the Gaming tree is still a work in progress.  I don’t think that we’ve fully tapped our creative potential in making new and improved ornaments.  Also, the train could use a little work.  With a bit more time next year, I’d like to have a more circular track of tiles – though the hexagonal look may not be a bad thing given the gaming theme!  I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes open for other game bits that can be used next Christmas….  I’m also willing to take any other suggestions that you might have!

Until your next appointment
The Gaming Doctor

Comments:

< Back Home