I love Power Grid, I think its an outstanding game. My Secret Santa (BGGMom) was kind enough to bless me with both the game and the Italy/France expansion. When I heard that there was a new free expansion out, I had to find it. Then I found out that it was a print-and-play deal. Not to be put off, I decided that it deserved the correct treatment in creating it, as it would likely see a bit of play from me. I didn't want some laminated papers, as they would just slide around too much. Here then is how I went about putting together this expansion. But first, please let me thank the creators for their work - this is top notch.

Ok, the first step was to get the image files and PDF instructions. I printed out the instructions (thankfully) - they note that you need to double print the Connection Cost Tile image.


Next I started printing. I have an HP inkjet printer and I printed all the images at their default size, on the top quality, onto basic white cardstock paper (I got mine at Michael's - its common stuff and should be readily available). While the printing was going on, I went ahead and prepped the board-backing.

For the boards, I used Bienfang Illustration board. I've found this at Staples - it comes in packages of three 20"x30" sheets. Three sheets should be sufficient to do the project, but you have to measure pretty carefully to get everything to fit without a lot of waste. I happened to have an extra 1/2 sheet around, so I wasn't overly concerned.

I measured and cut a piece out for the connection cost pieces. I spray painted one side of this with the Black Hammered metalic spray paint. Next I measured and sprayed another piece for the city and resource boards (I skipped the power plant market tiles since the aren't really needed - I'll probably go back and make them sooner or later). For these, I used a metalic copper spray paint. Finally, I sprayed 2 1/2 sheets with a blue metalic spray paint.

One can of the blue paint was not enough to get the coverage I wanted. In all spray paint cases, I sprayed over the boards once lightly to get get a light layer down, then I immediately went back over the board to cover all the areas that were light enough that the white board was still visible. The trick here is not to paint so heavily that you "soak" the board in paint. Also, try and get the board laying as flat as you possibly can.

While the boards were drying, I started trimming the printouts. I left a small white strip around each edge - this would allow me to trim the paper and boards all at once later on. Though you could probably do this project with a ruler and an utility knife, for best results you have to have a straight-edge roller cutter.

Once the papers were all trimmed, I layed out all the printouts and proceded to lightly spray a series of crystal clear coats onto all the images. I sprayed very lightly from each side of the image, so essentially I layed down 4 light coats onto the pictures. I did these all at once (ie spray, move, spray, move, spray...) and then let them dry completely (about an hour in low humidity). You do NOT want to spray too closely - 8-12" in an even series of patterns will come out very nicely.

Once everything has been sprayed and dried, it was time to put them together. I layed down some newspaper and coated the unpainted sides of the boards with spray adhesive. I worked in small batches, as the glue dries fairly quickly and the instructions say that immediately attaching the two items will form a more permanent bond. I carefully placed the paper on the boards. I then used a small wallpaper-seem roller (pocket change at any hardware store) to make sure that there weren't any bubbles and that everything was firmly pressed together.

Once all the pieces were assembled and had a good chance to dry overnight, all that was left was to trim everything. By leaving the small white edge around each image, I was able to make very straight cuts for all the boards and for the connection cost tiles. As a side benefit, the few places where the edges hadn't quite cemented down didn't even matter as they ended up on the cutting floor.

I think this turned out great and I can't wait to play it with my gaming group this weekend.

Well !

Congratz, it's fantastic job and i'm really proud of your result !

Enjoy with it !

JC Adelmand

Wow, too bad I won't be there this week. Make sure and bring it next week, too. I'd like to see your finished project.

JC Adelmand;
Thank you so much for providing this for free, and thanks to everyone who was involved in its production. It's an amazing piece of work.

Tatsu;
I'm currently working on mine. Having plumbed the many discussions here on BGG about making high quality games at home, here's how I'm doing it: Images were printed on an office quality laserjet (HP 4600)on regular 20# stock. Cardboard is 2mm matte board from a local art supply. I'm applying the paper by 3M '77' glue, and rolling down with a wooden paper towel holder. This is followed by 4 very thin coats of Krylon UV protectant (glossy). I'm trimming using a self-healing mat, utility knife, and metal ruler. I have such envy for your fancy cutter.

So far so good. I did the counters yesterday, which is the most labor-intensive part. The only obstacle from here on out is finding a well-ventilated area to complete the mission, as my wife is complaining about the fumes.

For some strange reason, I really like the market tiles, so they're a priority.

Anyways, nice job! I'm sure your gamer friends will be grateful for your investment.

BTW, why did you paint your backings? Was is the white? My matte board is white with a black backing (albeit with some printing), but I saw no reason to paint it.

Nice job Charles. Like Bobby, I would like to see it so try to bring it a week from Friday too.

Illustration board is white on both sides and I just wanted to something that matched a little. The white looked too "homemade" to my taste. Also, the amount of work required to spray paint a couple pieces of board was pretty minimal (10 minutes) - it doesn't have to be perfectly even, because slight un-eveness still looks ok on a backing.

The thing with the market tiles is that I didn't like them in two pieces. I think I'll end up making it into a single board which I'll put in with my regular game. The other thing was that I wanted to get this done enough to play with this week. The market tiles are not needed, but the other pieces were, so I tried to save time by doing two less tiles. I still have 4 of the connection tiles to do, but I have enough of them to play pretty much any size game right now.

The next project is to find a box that is just the right size...

That looks aweseome, Charles, great job! I look forward to seeing it.

Wow! Can't wait to see it, much less try it out!

So, are you going to have M.R. christen it with Dr. Pepper?

Good ole Mace can't even avoid taking a beating here!

Hey, if you spew the Pepper, you get treated like a leper!

Okay, that came out more harsh than I intended but I couldn't come up with a better rhyme.

If you laugh and spit, you're gonna take some sh*t?

We got to play using Charles' set last Friday and it is VERY nice. I wish I had the patience to do this.

I, too, made this expansion. The differences in my approach amount to using scissors in place of excact (not a good thing) and mixed feelings on the clearcoat. Let me expand a bit.

I used a paper cutter for the printouts. Done again, I would have been more exacting in this stage as it easier to cut paper exactly and match the card backing to the cutout than to trim both together. I used scissors in place of a knife because it's what I had. This wasn't really that bad and probably sped things up. However, the corners of the squares take a little beating with scissors' tendency to pull the board up a bit. I later pressed the pieces and they look fine and flat.

I used clearcoat and was reminded that the alcohol contained therein can cause spray adhesive to lift. Post-project pressing fixed this. I'm glad for the protection of the clearcoat, but it could've gone better. Perhaps I could've sprayed the paper cutouts before affixing them to the cardboard.

The bulk of my process took 4 hours and cost about $24 for the clearcoat, adhesive, and board. Adhesive - $11, clearcoat - $5, 3 sheets of board - $8. Plenty of adhesive remains.

Unfortunately, I can't upload images from Linux-land since my firefox and epiphany browsers get guff from this site. That said, I can post links to some images here:








Note that if you happen to have a copy of the new Hive game, everything fits right inside the box.

You guys have inspired me. I downloaded the images and combined them into a PDF and then uploaded it to a local CopyMax to have it color printed onto #80 card stock. (I only have a B&W laser printer.) It was about $1 a page, so I'm at about $28 so far. I have some spray adhesive, and when I got pick it up, I'll check for the board. Otherwise, my wife mats a lot of her photos, and I've used black mats before in the construction of games (using her scraps). That takes care of having to paint the other side. But I'll have to see if she's got enough scraps to make it worthwhile. Hopefully I can spend less than the cost of Power Grid itself, but hell, I love this kind of stuff. Project night!

Ah the box... I've been trying to find the perfect box.
I found one box at Michaels, but it was exactly the same dimensions as the boards - if it was just 3mm wider

If you get the printing done on a laser, you probably don't need to do the clear coat, but yes, definitely do it prior to any glue. I think I'd still skip using scissors. A utility knife and straight edge are cheap at any hardware store and will let you get prefectly straight cuts without the turned corners or other "marks".

All in all though, it looks pretty good to me.

Re: the box....
A great excuse to buy hive - a swell game. $17 @ B&B.

I agree that the clearcoat may have been excessive. It's just that when you game around people who drink, accidents happen. Any additional protection seemed worth the $6.

P


PS - if anyone can upload the images in my post to the images section and kick me the GG, it would be appeciated. ;-D I'm saving-up for an avatar.

P

I begin construction tonight. I picked up the color prints from OfficeMax with some illustration board. I think I got screwed on the price $4.29 per, so I just got two. I can supplement with mat board from my wife's photo framing. I think I need to pick up some adhesive, but OfficeMax wanted $15 for it, and that just didn't seem right to me.

In the end, I'll be spending more for this than I did for the board game, but we all know that's not the point.

I got my illustrator board at Staples and it was ~$12 for three large sheets, so $4ish is about the same price (not saying we both didn't get screwed)...
A big can of spray adhesive is pretty cheap at Walmart, Michaels, JoAnn fabrics, etc.

Soooooo much more than the game costs itself (don't care).

Agreed! And THANK YOU for all of your tips. It never would have looked this good without them.

After two trips to Utrecht, I came back with 3 22x28 sheets of Mounting board - not Illustrator board - at $1.99 each. Same thickness, but it's for mounting photos and paper, not drawing. So it's even more ideal for this project. You really need 4 sheets.

Here is what I purchased to complete the project (which is COMPLETE as of 5 minutes ago). But it's important to note that apart from the paper, I'll use all of this again, or my wife will, as she's a photographer that mounts her prints. So it's not like I'll be wasting any excess.

Final materials:
27 Color Laser prints onto 80# card ($29)
3 22x28 sheets of mounting board ($1.99 ea)
2 20x30 sheets of Illustrator board ($4.29 ea)
1 can Photo Mount spray adhesive ($12.99)
1 Straight Blade for a Logan Compact Mat Cutter ($21.99) ( http://www.logangraphic.com/products/boardmounted/compact.sh...)

I don't know how I would have done this without the mat cutter, which I bought for my wife a few years ago. And that straight cutting head made all the difference in the world.

After picking up the prints from OfficeMax (color laser onto 80# cardstock), I came home and made a salmon dinner with steamed veggies and rice. Next to the stove, while this was all cooking, I used my wife's roller paper cutter to trim down the prints, leaving a small white border (thanks again for the tip!).

After dinner, I made the trips to Utrecht to pick up the supplies and headed into the basement. Inspired by your metallic blue paint job, I spray painted the back of one of the illustrator boards to cover up the logos using an old can of metallic silver (that I'd used to trick out my PC a couple years ago). But the mounting board was the same on both sides, so I deemed it Not Necessary to continue with the spray paiting.

I proceeded with the spray adhesive, spraying it onto the backs of the prints. All the hair on my left arm is now stiff from this wicked adhesive. But MAN that stuff is genious. A tight, uniform coating and those prints are locked on that board for good.

I mounted the scoring track, 60 chits, the power plant and resource markets onto the spraypainted board. That stuff dries fast as hell, so I took it all upstairs to my wife's photo matting area (a luan door on two IKEA sawhorses) and began the cutting.

Two hours later, my back hurts and I'm a little fuzzy from the fumes. But HOLY CRAP does this look awesome. Full-bleed, thick boards and gorgeous art. My wife said it looks professionally done, and I have to agree. (Then she said, "Now you have to find a box.")

Not so! Out goes the box insert, and it all fits in the Power Grid box. Of course, my copy of Power Grid now weighs about 20lbs. (I have the Italy/France expansion in there also, so it doesn't quite close all the way.)

That was a fun project, and the results are fantastic. I'm going on a gaming retreat next weekend, and I'll get to show it off there. I'm hosting tomorrow night, so I'm sure it's getting to the table tomorrow night.

Instead of mucking around with spray adhesive, try printing the images onto laser/injet label sheets (available as full sheets). This way, you can just peel off the stickers and paste it straight onto illustrator board! Voila!

I found some wooden cigar boxes at Michaels on sale for $2 each. Big enough to hold everything but the connection cost counters. I'll try and put up pictures tonight.

Glad to hear it all worked out well for you Greg.

And here is the box.

Again, just a $2 wooden cigar box from Michaels.

Awright, I'll chime in and talk about how I made MY copy of this game (yay, bandwagons!)....

Instead of printing the graphics out onto card stock, I went ahead and printed them directly to full-size label sheets. I've begun using the Avery full-size sheets for copiers, because they're cheaper than the inkjet sheets, and seem to have the same quality of printing. I printed them out at 18cm x 18cm on the highest quality setting (as recommended by the folks who designed this thing), and they look sharp, with some fine detail. It took 25 sheets to print out all the graphics, but I also opted to print out the current/future market board.

For the backing material, I used black matboard. A few weeks ago, I picked up some 32" x 40" matboard at Hobby Lobby (still 2-for-1, $5.99, at least through Saturday!), and had enough on hand for all the printouts. The matboard is about 1/16" thick, which I think is sufficient for the purposes of this expansion.

I was able to fit 20 of the graphics on one sheet of the matboard, but I had to trim some of the excess white off of the label sheets. In the end, it took about 1.5 sheets of matboard to create the whole thing. The hardest part of this process, for me, was keeping the labels flat as I stuck them down to the matboard; as a result, I have a few creases on some of the tiles, but nothing serious.

To cut the pieces out, I used a metal ruler, a rotary trimmer*, and a cutting mat. It took about 2.5 hours to cut them all out, but the hardest part was cutting out all the connection cost tiles, just because they were smaller. The larger pieces were easy, once I was able to clear enough room off our dining room table to get the whole blasted sheet up there.

My original plans involved me making a box for the pieces, since I was under the assumption that the pieces wouldn't all fit in the Power Grid box. This was my first attempt at making a box (out of the matboard), and it was a passable success. I didn't like that I could see the white beneath the black of the matboard, and it seemed to tilt in one direction once I contructed the whole thing. Oh, and I had to make the lid twice, because I made it too small the first time around. *sigh* It was just a waste of matboard.

Anyway, everything does fit into my Power Grid box, once I take out the insert, so I scrapped the idea of the box. I now have the base game, the France/Italy board, and the Atolla Modulis set, all in one box:



It does weigh a ton now, though.

I'm very pleased with the results, too, because I think the final product looks professional (if I do say so myself...).




*Rotary trimmers ROCK. They provide much more control than using an Xacto knife, and can provide a straight cut through the materials (when using a knife, I tend to make my cuts at an angle). You can get these things cheaply from Wal-Mart, and are well worth the investment.

To follow up my previous post: the construction went off swimmingly, whatever that means...I did slice my finger open pulling a utility knife down the metal ruler, but no permanent damage was done...I used posterboard, not matte board, but it was plenty thick...In the future, I would like to use labels, but I'm having trouble finding glossy label sheets...Some of my corners came up due to imcomplete glue coverage, so I sprayed glue on a razor blade, applied to the corner, and pressed down with a paper towel...The UV/glossy protectant was a lifesaver, as I spilled hot tea (!) all over my end of the table, and myself, early in setting up the first game...The one tile that was affected is fine, and bears no record of the incident.

That cigar box is sweet! I hope my Michael's carries them.

I am surely getting a rotary cutter, too. Nice job, Isaac.

First of all:

THANK YOU, TATSU!!!!!!!! for you!!


I followed your technique (minus the blue spray on the tile backs), and it worked like a champ -- the roller cutter is DEFINITELY the way to go!

I also used the Krylon UV/Glossy overcoat, and that came out great -- and waterproof, too!!

The only thing I did differently was to create my own resource market graphic, as I am used to seeing all the wooden bits lined up in long rows. The file that came with the rest staggered the market in three rows/columns, which seemed both visually distracting & less than practical when it came to replenishment.

I'll upload my "market" file over the weekend, but imagine one that looks more like the ones on the original boards, although in a tri-fold form.

And all of my stuff also fits in the original box -- even with France/Italy -- minus the insert (which I wasn't all that fond of anyway)

BGG ROCKS!