Catan is Settled! Completed Game & Playing Pieces

Whenever one door closes, another opens...or something like that.  It's the end/beginning of an era.  My attempt at a 3D Settlers of Catan is complete!  So while I will now have no idea what I will do with my free time, I will get to enjoy my new game with friends, which is always a plus.

 

Completed 3D Settlers of Catan

 A big thanks to Chris and Kate for their enormous help in completing all aspects of the game. So now a quick breakdown of some of the pieces you haven't seen yet, and some last minute details of the game. This post is going to be a doozy, and some content at the end may not be suitable for all readers.  I warn you now.

The Game Pieces: Settlements, Cities & Roads

Settlements, Cities & Roads

As per usual, my forming of the game pieces is a combination of supplies from Michaels craft store, and the model train store. The settlements and cities are 1/2" and 3/4" square blocks (respectively). The roads are 3/16" x 3/8" basswood cut into 1 1/4" strips, wrapped in strips of plastic pattern sheets. I wasn't sure how I was going to paint the blocks, and even toyed with the idea of printing off pictures of tiny houses onto stickers, and wrapping the wood with it.  But in the end, I followed KISS (keep it simple stupid). I painted the squares to look like the pieces from the original game.  Stay with what works right?

With the way my hexes are dimensionalized, I needed my roads to be bigger than the original games.  When I saw the "Random Coarse Stone, HO-scale" plastic pattern sheet at the model train store (b/c where else would you find something like this?) I knew it would be perfect. I used the basswood as a template for how thick to cut the strips, then hot glued the plastic around the edges. This helped cover up my rough edges, since I only had a hacksaw to cut the wood with.  Also, I should note that if you can't find/don't own a Dremmel tool (or in my case, it was accidentally thrown out), your dogs' 'Pedipaws' acts as a great sander. I used it on all 60 road pieces to smooth out the edges where the plastic met the wood. I painted everything the colour of each player, and then wiped the plastic down with some tissue, to get the coloured stone effect. All these pieces got a heavy dose of spray glaze.

The Number Tokens & the Desert


Numbered Tokens & Desert in play

At first, I was going to use 1" round foam marshmallows for my number tokens, but I had trouble cutting them down to the right size.  I even based all the holes in my hexes around these pieces, figuring I would find a solution by the time everything was done.  In the end, we thought the best way to hide the cut marks would be to paint 1" wooden discs and glue them on top.  Well, it turns out, we didn't need the foam marshmallows (except for one ore hex), and the discs looked great on their own.  I painted them a base white, put the numbered stickers on each, and painted the probability dots on the front, using the same stencil technique as the colons from the ports. I also put the corresponding letter stickers on the back, then spray glazed the heck out of them. I figured the glaze would be key since we'd be handling all these pieces so much.
For the desert, I tried to sculpt a sand dune from sculpey.  My art skills mimic nature poorly, but I got something that was passable.  I sprinkled it with sand (that we brought back from our trip to Florida) and baked it according to the package directions.  Afterwards, I brushed on a thin layer of white glue, and spinkled it with sand again.  After that dried, I covered it lightly with the spray glaze. I used Decoart Triple Thick Gloss Glaze for all of my spray glazing. My search for the perfect robber is proving to be elusive. Currently we're using a custom built Lego robber my husband made (again while in Florida), but he doesn't really fit with the rest of the scenery. (To see a picture, scroll down to the last few pictures in the "Warning: Mature Content" section of this blog.)

The Inaugural Game
It seemed only fitting that the first game be played with Carlos & Laurie, who introduced Chris & I to the game. In all honesty, it took a few minutes to get used to the 3D Settlers of Catan game. At first it's hard to keep track of your pieces and roads with everything else on the board, but after awhile you get used to it. To set up the 3D game in a random manner, we set up the regular game on the table, and simply placed the 3D pieces on top of it.  Fortunately my 3" candle mold appears to be almost the exact same size as the original game. Every new game we played, we just removed the 3D pieces, re-distributed the original hexes, then put the 3D pieces back on top of the corresponding pieces.


4 Players Completed Settlers of Catan Game - I won!

 

Same Completed 3D Settlers of Catan game, different view

 What Would I Change?
So now that it's done, is there anything I would change?  As far as the completed game goes - not a thing. If I had to make it again?  There's a ton I would change.  First off, I'd order the hexes.  While the candle mold allowed me to get closer than simply cutting or tracing would, it wasn't perfect.  I spent a lot of hours sanding the sculpey to fit together. A commenter on this blog was gracious enough to show me the set she made her boyfriend, and her blog detailed where she bought the hexes. I think I could have saved myself a lot of time had I gone that route.  I also found some different wheat I wouldn't mind adding if I were to do this again. Most of all, I'd avoid that damn Blue Pearl sculpey that nearly crippled my hands for life.

Mature Content - 18 & Above Only Please - Reader Discretion is Advised!
So I did what I have been toying with for the entire creation of this project.  I bought the naughty, HO scale figurines having sex.  Why?  Because it's hilarious.  Also, of all of the pieces on this gameboard, they are the only ones actually "settling" Catan. I mean, to populate Catan, you're going to need its Settlers procreating right?
You may or may not believe that wide variety of "couples" they had, and most of them involved furniture of some type.  Since furniture is too advanced for Catan, I settled for the couple that were having sex on a bench, and substitited a brick for the bench. Then I stuck them under my brick bridge, b/c obviously that's where they'd be sneaking off to have sex.  Also, as we played the game, we referred to any brick taken from this hex as "sexy brick."

I put this as a seperate section with a warning b/c I realise while my friends and I found this funny, it may offend some people.  So if that's you, stop reading now, and whatever you do, don't scroll down! Reader discretion is advised!


The Lego Robber and the couple under the bridge




A closer look at "The Sexy Brick" Hex



Ports - Trading the use of my Hands for Resources

I must start of this post with a complaint to Sculpey.  Your "Blue Pearl" is damn near impossible to use.  To all you out there wanting to embark on a project like this take note; different colours of Sculpey have different softness levels. There were various solutions on the Internet for softening, but when I tried to go to the store to buy clay softener, they didn't sell it.  Anyways, after making half the water hexes, I had to recruit my husband because my hands were too sore to make the rest of them. I ended up buying two packs of Premo in "Blue Pearl" to mix into my existing clay to soften it.  It made it possible, but my recommendation is this; either only buy the soft clay, or find the stupid softener before you start! I only did half of the foamwich on the water ports. I glued the hexes to the craft foam, and cut out around it, but didn't both with the top part, since the water hexes don't need a number token.

Stenciling ports with stickers & paint

For both the ports and the number tokens, I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy a lot of stickers, or try to paint the numbers on.  As it turns out, I did a combination of the two.  I had bought 2 packages of discount stickers from Michaels, but it wasn't enough to cover all the ports and the tokens.  So I used the negative of the sticker sheet as a stencil for painting.  It turned out really well.  The stickiness lasted for about 5 imprints, which was luckily what I needed for ports.  In fact, the colon stencil lasted for all 9 ports. Be sure to really rub down on the sticker before you paint. It's not fun to try to clean up paint that leaked underneath the sticker.


For the "docks" of my ports I tried a bunch of different things before I found something I liked.  I started off by painting wooden coffee stir sticks, but it was too time consuming to try to paint each individual board on such a small scale. Then I tried gluing toothpicks together, but that got goopy fast, and it didn't look very good.  Then the helpful gents over at the model train store (at this point I really should give a shout out to the staff at George's Trains) came to the rescue, again. Scribed sheets of basswood at a 0.60" scribe were the perfect size for a dock, and were easily cut with my exacto knife. I did a thin wash of brown paint, but you could also use wood stain if you have it on hand.

Now that my blister has healed, I felt comfortable going back to using my hot glue gun, so I glued the docks and resources onto the hexes. I should point out that instead of making a small rock out of craft foam, I just painted a regular stone I found outside, and glued that to my port. To seal the painted numbers, all the ports got a good spray with my triple thick glaze, which also added a nice shiny water effect.


Completed ports for 3D Settlers of Catan



Settling the Settlers - The People of Catan

So remember way back to my post about sheep and the HO scale? If not, there's an entire miniature collection that's called the HO scale. (Hilarious, I know!) It's popular amongst the model train crowd. So in addition to my HO sheep, I wanted to add some people to take care of the sheep, and participate in various other resource related activities. So I went and bought some HO people...and now they are settling Catan. Since I made my model resources for the blog first, I was able to incorporate the people into some of the other hexes. You may recall me mentioning that they have HO people in some R rated situations.  I haven't added those...yet.  I'm really tempted.  I think it would be a good laugh every time I laid the board out. Get it?  Laid?  Hahaha...I really shouldn't use this blog as a forum for my terrible sense of humour.

Anyways, here are some of the other resources with the HO people. These are all the Preiser figurines, but I think the naughty ones are Noch.


Lumberjack HO figurine on the lumber/wood resource

   



Moving bricks around on the brick resource



Harvesting the wheat on the grain resource

 



Shepherd watching over his flock on the wool/sheep resource




Harvesting ore from the ore resource




The Ore Resource aka "Rocks"

So my finger is healing nicely, and I've regained my ability to type. There's still an unsightly blister, but it doesn't hurt, so I take that as a good sign. However, as a precaution, I only used white tackly glue for my Ore hex.

Carved Ore from Floral Foam

 I saved this resource for last because it was the most laborious as well as the most time consuming.  I actually worked on it at the same time as my other resources, but needed to allow for drying times. I started this hex with a block of craft foam, available at your local craft store.  Michaels was having a sale on their dry floral foam, so I bought a bulk pack because I wasn't sure how many I would screw up before I got it right. If you haven't used floral foam before, it's messy.  It crumbles everywhere, and you get covered in a fine mist of green foam.  To try to contain the mess, I did most of my "carving" in a plastic bag. I used one of my sculpey shaping tools to score around the brick on an angle.  Then literally ripped it apart at the seams.  The result was some jagged pieces of foam sticking up on both pieces. 


Painted mountain/ore

Using the same tool I did for scoring, I whittled away excess pieces until I got some pieces about the right size. I sized them up against my hex, and carved out recesses for my number token. Once they were the shape I wanted I dunked them in mix of equal parts white glue and water. Are you noticing a podgy theme yet? Once dried, I painted them with a base coat of silver paint. You may need to do 2 coats, depending on how absorbent the foam is, and how much glue you used in your podgy mix. The decorative painting consisted of painting the shadows a dark gray, and the highlights a light gray.  Sounds simplistic right? The key is to blend.  It looks really weird if you just glob blobs of light and dark on, you have blend it so it looks more natural. After I was satisfied that my carved pieces of foam actually resembled rocks, I sprayed them with a triple thick gloss glaze to ensure the foam wouldn't crumble after being handled repeatedly.

I went to Peru a few years ago and was in awe of the wild orchids growing around Machu Picchu. To try to recreate the mountain flowers, I added my multi use moss to bits and pieces of the ore, and painted orange and red dots on them. Admittedly, they look nothing like Peru or orchids, but I thought it was a nice touch anyways. I also used flat nosed pliers to crush some rock/slate I found outside and made a tiny pathway, which I painted small dabs of silver on to match my mountain.

Up next - Settling the Settlers.  You didn't think I made all my hexes the same did you?  Of course not - where's the fun in that? And what would Settlers of Catan be without the people settling it?  Stay tuned...



Completed Ore/Rock/Mountain Resource



The Brick Resource

Blistered hot glue finger



I must start off this post with a cautionary tale of a girl and her glue gun. A girl, that is now only typing with 9 fingers. I have wielded a glue gun for many years.  I had grown arrogant enough to think that I didn't really get burned by the hot glue any longer, that I had somehow grown immune over the years. My hubris was my own downfall. While switching between tacky glue and hot glue, I accidentally squeezed the gun too hard, and a giant glob of hot glue started falling towards my beloved hexes.  I scooped it up with my index finger, only to find that hot glue in large quantities stays hot longer than small dabs. And thus my blistered finger. Did you know it's really hard to type without your index finger?

Brick Bridge - Before & After

Anyways, onto why you are really reading - the brick resource!  The resource I actually call by the right name! The resource where I hit a major mental block on what to do to make it 3D. Try Googling brick or clay fields.  The result don't lend themself well to 3D Settlers, as fields are pretty flat. While playing around with the tiny bricks I bought at the miniature doll store, I had no idea what I wanted to do. At first my husband and I toyed with the idea of cutting the bricks down to 1/8 of what they already were at, to keep them at a closer scale to the rest of the hexes.  But accurately scoring and cutting tiny pieces of brick from an already small piece of brick proved...difficult. Enter Kate, who is staying with us for a few days (you can see her on the right, I think she's the only person following this blog). She was also google imaging bricks, and we saw a small bridge picture.  You could literally see the light bulbs going on.

So armed with my trusty glue gun (sigh), and some bricks, we created a brick bridge!  I then used some of my grab bag moss to sponge/paint on some red & gold paint to try to make the bridge look less like small bricks glued together, and more like a weathered bridge.  I also glued some of the moss on the bottom and winding up the edges to make it look  older. We toyed with the idea of putting a river under the bridge, but once we put it on the hex, we realised there wasn't really space for a river in addition to the number token.


Completed Brick  hex



The Forest/Lumber Resource aka "Wood"

Trees for the Forest Resource

This resource is actually the one I had a pretty good idea of in my head all along.  Once I found tiny evergreen trees at a miniature dollhouse store, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. The trees were good, but I realised that the hex was supposed to produce a resource, so I thought I should find some lumber or logs for it as well.  The gentleman at the model train store was helpful at pointing out a milled lumber yard, but it seemed a little too advanced for the Settlers to have.  Upon advising him I was looking for un-milled lumber, he told me he went and cut down some dead sticks that had fallen in the forest behind his house for his model train set. 



Dead sticks for the Lumber



Well, I don't have a forest by my house, but I did find some sticks while walking my dog. Now, despite my dog's affinity for tracking down sticks, dogs aren't a requirement to finding a good stick you can use for lumber. Apparently the most important thing to know is that it actually has to be a dead stick.  If you snap it off a live tree there's problems with drying/shrinking or something along those lines (according to the man at the model train store). I eyeballed what I thought would be a good scale for my hex, and sawed several pieces approximately the same size. I then piled them into groups of three, stacking them on top of each other. I hot glued them into this formation, then soaked the final piece in my white glue/podgy concoction to seal everything in.

While placing the pieces on the hex, it seemed unbalanced.  So I decided to throw a river in there to round out the hex.  I used the same hot glue on wax paper strategy I used for the sheep ponds.  Except this time, instead of using paint, I used permanent marker.  It dried much faster, was WAY less messy, and looks essentially the same. Hindsight is 20/20.



Finished Wood Hex



The Wool Resource aka "Sheep"

Ok, so wheat is done.  What next?  Again by random choice of what foam got glued next is... sheep!


HO Scale Sheep

 Did you know you can buy miniature sheep, that just happen to be the perfect size for a 3D Model of Catan?  They were at the train model store, the same place I happened across my delightful wheat!  Apparently you can purchase many miniature animals and people - even miniature people caught in compromising situations! I'm still trying to figure out how I can work them into Settlers.  Alas, I don't think I can ... unless maybe they were in the desert. And the name of the scale? HO. Hilarious.

Anyways, the sheep come in 3 different positions.  Standing, laying, and eating grass.  The package came with 18 white sheep and 1 black sheep, so I'm going to average 4 white sheep per hex.  I'm also toying with the idea of using a sheep on the port hex.  Haven't quite figured that out yet.

Sheep with painted bases



So the only downside to my perfectly sized, little sheepies is that they come attached to white bases, presumably so that they don't fall over. That's great and all, but my hex is green, so they stand out a bit.  Fortunately I found some old acrylic paint I used at Christmas, and painted the bases a lovely Christmas green. I would recommend two coats to cover the base, as the white really wants to shine through.

Hot Glue Ponds & Streams

The sheep still stood out a bit, so I thought I'd add some grass for them to munch on. I took some grass shaped moss from my moss grab bag, and applied the same podgey technique used to stiffen the wheat.  Satisfied that it wouldn't immediately crumble, I also painted it the same Christmas green as the sheep's bases.

Well my sheep now have grass to eat, but nothing to drink.  Thinking my sheep would get thirsty, I made little ponds to place by the grass.  Do real shepherds have little ponds they take the sheep to?  I have no idea.  But my sheep would have water dammit! Using a hot glue gun on a non stick surface, I experimented with different shaped ponds and streams. After they (quickly) dried/cooled, I peeled them off and painted the bottoms blue. The end result?  I've got some sheep that are chilling and eating and my second resource done!

Completed Wool/Sheep hex with sheep, grass and water