Settlers of the Rockies

Some of you know that I’ve been working on making a board game for my boyfriend, Andrew, for Christmas. I must say, it was by far the most in-depth project I’ve worked on. I am beyond relieved that it is FINALLY complete. In fact, I gave it to him last night since we were apart for Christmas this year. We’ve played it twice. His mom won both times, which means I’ve literally been beaten at my own game.

I didn’t invent the game but instead made my own version of one of Andrew’s favorite board games, Settlers of Catan. It’s kind of a nerdy strategy game but very fun. The object of the game is to earn resources in order to expand your settlements into cities and just generally build as much as possible in order to gain “victory points”. It would take me forever to explain how to play so I won’t, except to say that it’s a great family game and loads of fun. If you’re into board games, I highly recommend it.

Instead of making “Settlers of Catan,” though, I based it on Colorado (Andrew loves it there) and called it “Settlers of the Rockies.” By the time the last hex was dry, I had probably spent between 35 and 40 hours on the entire game from start to finish. What took the most time was the resource cards; I hand drew and colored both sides of each of the 123 cards. The original game has 125 but I was working on this until my last day at home and needed to just get them laminated before I left Pasadena for Chicago, so I left two of the progress cards out. I had to custom order the hexes online because apparently wooden hexagons are not in high demand…weird, huh? I primed and oil painted the hexes, which took forever to dry. I also primed and painted the metal washer game pieces, but used acrylic paint instead. For the cards, I just cut 4×6 index cards in half and when I was done took them to Office Max to be laminated, then cut them out. I had a little manual corner rounder that I got at Staples and used that before and after laminating the cards.

Here are the pictures of the board game after we set it up for play:

All the individual hexes fit together to form the game board

 

The resource cards, which took forever

 

Settlers of the Rockies!

Building cost cards show which cards you need to build something

Progress cards give you an extra advantage

More of the progress cards

Game pieces I bought at Home Depot. Containers purchased at the Container Store.