Care Bear Birthday Cake

Well I'm a little late on getting this posted but its been another year and that means time for another birthday cake. Crazy that it has been 3 years since my baby girl was born!

This year I decided to go a little bit bigger and do a "3" tier cake. My mom thought I was crazy and asked "how many tiers I was going to do for her 16th birthday?" I answered with "sixteen of course." I was joking...I think...I guess we will see. But is was a good thing we went bigger this year because we had over 40 people over for the birthday party. 

It was a fun cake to decorate and was special to have the birthday girl help out this year. Pictures aren't the best but the party was outside and I had to do some of the decorating outside, so keeping the kids out of the cake was a challenge and we're lucky that I was able to get pictures of the final product.

BANG! Osseointegrated Expansion

NOTE: All images and names used in the official BANG! (and its expansions) are copyright © dV Giochi.

Osseointegrated is an unofficial expansion to BANG! the card game and the second, designed by Quincy Thompson (me) and tested with the help of my friends at dental school. (it was completed in 2015, however the final printing was completed and Rule book finished in 2017) Osseointegrated is a expansion that builds off the official Gold Rush expansion, adding 8 new characters, 26 more playing cards and 14 more equipment cards to BANG!. It is named after a dental term along with character names coming from current faculty at my dental school and some based on fictional western heroes. Many of the other cards are inspired by and use the artwork from the custom cards made in the various unofficial expansions created on The BANG! Blog.

PDF downloads: 

Rule Book

Deck Cards

Character Cards
Equipment Cards

The Osseointegrated Rule Book provides detailed explanation of the new symbols, rules, and characters; and card by card explanations as needed.

NEW BROWN CARDS

Cheers. Lose a gold nugget, and then give any player, including yourself, a life.	Debt Colloection. Take one gold nugget from a player at a distance of 1.	Loan. Gain two gold nuggets from the heap.
Gold Pan. Discard a card with this card then gain one gold nugget from the heap and draw one card from the deck.	Greed. Lose one life then gain two gold nuggets from the heap.	Hit Me. Lose one life then draw two cards from the deck.
Joker. You may play a Joker at any time to repeat the effect of any Brown Boardered Card you last played. You may do this even out of turn. The Joker is also a wild suit, meaning when played or when it is drawn for a “draw!” you may chose the suit.

 

NEW BLUE CARDS

Peace Pipe . Play this card in front of anyother player, to smoke the Peace Pipe! If you are smoking the Peace Pipe, you must “draw!” before the beginning of your turn: • if you draw a card showing Dimonds, you stop smoking, discard the Peace Pipe and continue your turn as normal; • otherwise keep the Peace Pipe and you may not use a BANG! on your turn. So, if you play a Duel, you will automatically lose a life point if your opponent plays a BANG! card. A player keep smoking the Peace Pipe until a Dimond is drawn with the effect explained above, or it is drawn or discarded by a Panic! or a Cat Balou. If you have both the Peace Pipe and/or Gamble and/or a Dynamite and/or a Jail in play, check the Dynamite, Jail, and/or Gamble first (in that order).

 NEW GREEN CARDS 

Buried Treasure . Play Buried Treasure in front of you. During one of your following turns, provided you still have the card in front of you, gain three gold nuggets from the heap.

Robbery . Play Robbery in front of you. During one of your following turns, provided you still have the card in front of you, starting with the player to your left each player may return a gold nugget to the heap, or lose one life point.

NEW EQUIPMENT CARDS

Curse. You may play the Curse on yourself or another player. The Curse cannot be played on the Sheriff. When you have the Curse in play it is not discarded when you are eliminated. When eliminated you or the person with the Curse on them becomes a ghost during their turn and may use their character power. On their turn the ghost draws 3 cards, plays as many cards as he wants, and then discards all exceeding cards in his hand…that means all the cards in his hand since he has no life points! At the end of his turn he is eliminated again, so all of his cards go to Vulture Sam, if this character is in play, otherwise they are discarded as usual. As the text on the card states, each “ghost” is in play until the end of his turn: if the game ends during his turn, he is considered to be in play for victory purposes. So, if the ghost was an Outlaw or a Deputy, Outlaws win because at least another player (the ghost himself) different from the Renegade is in play. If the ghost was the Renegade, he wins if after killing the Sheriff there are no other players alive, otherwise Outlaws win.	Headdress. The brown-bordered card may also be another BANG! You may repeat each effect one time only. If you repeat the effect of a Stagecoach or Wells Fargo, the Wild West Show card only changes the first time. Repeating the effect counts as one card played, if Miss Susanna is in play.	Saloon Show. Even though this card has the same effect, it is not considered a Gatling, Saloon, or Indians.
Satchel. When you have the Satchel in play you take into your hand all discarded cards from others players at the end of their turns, cards you discard at the end of your turn do not apply to this effect.	Silver. When you have Sliver in play the distance between other players and you is increased by 1. However, you still see the other players at the normal distance.	Spyglass. When you have a Spyglass in play, you see all the other players at a distance decreased by 1. However, other players still see you at the normal distance. Distances less than 1 are considered to be 1.
Stetson. When you have the Stetson you are considered to have a Barrel in play at all times; you can “draw!” when you are the target of a BANG!, and on a Heart you are missed. If you have another real Barrel card in play, you can count both of them, giving you two chances to cancel the BANG! before playing a Missed!.	U.S. Marshal. When you have the U.S. Marshal in play, during your turn, no card in front of any other player has any effect. This applies both to the blue- as well as to the greenbordered cards. It does not apply to equipment cards.

THE CHARACTERS

Clark Dana. (4 life points): he may play any card in his hand as a BANG! anytime another player plays a Beer, even when it is not his turn. First resolve the effect of the Beer played then resolve the BANG! he plays. If it is out of turn after resolving the effects of the BANG! it will return to the players turn that was interrupted.	Daniel Long. (4 life points): on his turn he may discard a weapon card from his hand as a BANG! with the range of the discarded weapon. This does not count as his limit of 1 BANG! per turn.	Lonesome Ranger . (5 life points): when any player eliminates him, he must discard all cards he has in hand and in play, this includes equipment cards. If the Lonesome Ranger had the role of Outlaw the play who eliminates he receives the outlaw reward after discarding all of this cards.
Okie Annie. (4 life points): for each wound she has the distance other players she her is increased by 1.	Pepper Minstix. (4 life points): anytime during her turn she my discard 1 card to draw 1 card from the deck. She may use this ability once during his turn.	Robert Alder. (4 life points): when he plays a blue card he draws a card from the deck.
Ted Rice. (4 life points): he may not be targeted with a BANG! by a player who’s range is less then his.	The Fox. (4 life points): during his turn, other players character abilities have no effect.

Little Mermaid Birthday Cake

I can't believe it has already been a year and I am making another birthday cake for my little girl. She loves the little mermaid and everything princess.

To go with the pool party theme here is her Little Mermaid birthday cake:

Until next time. Hopefully sooner then next year...

Rosette Birthday Cake

It has been far to long since I made a cake and decorated it. I made a few mistakes while making it but in the end it turned out well. This was four 8" round cakes.

It is the first of many birthday cakes for my little one. Design chosen by my wife: Rosette topped cupcake.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past Custom Slash Ally Card

Well it has only been a few days since the end of IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past Board Game Kickstarter but people have already started making customs for it. You can check them out on the Facebook group; which inspired me to make my own custom to kick things off. Here is my custom Ally card for Slash:

Slash is one of my absolute favorite characters in the IDW comics. I will probably be making more customs for the game once it is released this summer, along with a bunch more TMNT customs for Heroscape which you will find on my Heroscape Blog.

Settlers of Catan Oil Springs Modification

Settlers of Catan is one of my favorite board games. We always use the Seafares, Cities and Knights, and Fisherman expansions. We have also enjoyed using the Volcano expansion on occasion. Why am I telling you this, well because I have been working on my on custom expansion for Catan for many years that would be compatible with all of the expansions I play with. During my work on this expansion we came across and started playing with the Catan Oil Springs Scenario, which was great to mix things up and make the desert useful. However, I felt the contents were cheap and needed to be improved. I also started trying to incorporate Oil into my own expansion, but as others have pointed out the theme of Oil doesn't fit with the medieval theme of Catan.  

Since I no longer plan to include Oil in my own expansion I thought I would share the improvements I made to the Oil Springs Scenario pieces. First, up is an actual resource card for Oil.

I don't mind the idea of tokens, like for fish that aren't considered resources, but it really bugged me that Oil is a resource and counted towards your hand limit but was a token.

Second, was making the Desert Oil hex one piece instead of the small piece that you just put on top of the deserts.

Next thing that needed changing was replacing the metropolis tokens with metropolis pieces that match the ones from Cities and Knights. Along with that the trade-in/build guide needed to be updated.

Lastly the Champion of the Environment token needed to have a card that was similar to the Longest Road victory point card.

Unfortunately because of the theme brake I haven't printed any of these but I do plan to barrow these ideas and the ideas of others to keep many of the elements introduced in this expansion. For those that like the Oil Springs Scenario I hope you enjoy these improvements.

Pandemic Custom Role: Bacteriologist

I am a little late to the Pandemic Board Game scene, but it is a really fun co-op game. I have had a lot of fun playing it and using the expansion On the Brink. My gaming group isn't the biggest fan of the Bio-terrorist Challenge, so I decided to make a custom role for the unused Black pawn. I present the Bacteriologist:

When designing this role I wanted it to be useful even when not playing with On the Brink. I also wanted to encourage team work and encourage the building of research centers; because in most games we only build 2 to 3 research centers total.

The Bacteriologist isn't as strong as the Scientist, but the Bacteriologist helps other players use their City cards without just discarding them.

Right now this is the only card I have made and I am not sure I will make more but if I do I will continue to use my custom symbol:

Who knows maybe I will have my own small expansion at one point.