This is a fairly simple project using polymer clay to make replacement cubes for Pandemic. I spent about 15 minutes working with the clay and then about 20 more baking the cubes in a toaster oven. Since the cubes don't have to be perfectly identical, it is a pretty simple project.

Objective

I enjoy Pandemic, but the cubes that came with my copy (1st ed., I don't know if the second ed. is any better) are way too big for my taste. By the time there are two or three cubes on a city, it becomes hard to see what the city name is and to see the nearby cities and routes. To address this I decided to make my own cubes from polymer clay that are roughly half the width of the original cubes.

Supplies

* Pasta machine (or something else to roll out fairly consistent sheets of clay)
* A clay roller (to squish layers of clay together. this is optional if the sheets are being rolled out at the desired thickness already)
* Small quantities of polymer clay in the appropriate colors (I did purple in addition to black, blue, red, and yellow, in anticipation of Pandemic: On the Brink)
* A tissue blade (or other sharp, thin blade)

Process

After conditioning the clay, I rolled out a sheet using the thickest setting of the pasta machine. Then I cut the sheet in two and stacked the layers to make a thicker sheet. I used the roller to squish them together just a bit.

Once I had a double thickness sheet, I carefully trimmed off the rough edges and cut small strips about as wide as the sheet was thick. Then I turned the blade and cut across the strips to make cubes.

I carefully separated the cubes and squared up any that were very lopsided or oddly shaped. I made one or two extras of each color, just in case, and then put them all in the toaster oven for about 20 minutes.

Voila! Tiny replacement cubes that fit in the city circles on the board!

Very nice.

I like it. Another solution, for those who don't have clay, might be to use the very small D6 dice that you can buy in fairly large quantity. They are about that same size, and come in a variety of colors. They have the pips on them, of course, but you could spray paint over that if you so choose.

Just don't INHALE too close to the board... those aren't cubes, they're spores!

we just make small towers using the original cubes. Fits perfectly. Can not remember if they collapsed any time.

The problem zones are immediately visible.

Pretty cool. I've also seen people use small chips, or wooden discs to accommodate stacking. If you're disappointed at the value of a US dollar, and one hundredth of that makes you even more sad why not spray paint a couple hundred the colors of your favorite pathogens, and drastically increase their value?

I agree with dude above though. I stack the cubes that came with the game, and have no trouble. I still like to hear people coming up with creative ideas though. Smaller cubes, or discs would have been a better choice from the get go. Less material, and less clutter.

You can also squeeze polymer clay through a Play-Doh extruder to make bars that can be cut into cubes (before or after baking).

Gorno

Another way of getting a consistent thickness of clay is to place spacers of the desired thickness (pencils, for example) on either side of the clay to stop the roller from pressing the clay thinner than desired.

Gorno