Halloween 2018: Ezra’s Death Gun Costume

Another year, another Halloween costume! This year Ezra chose the character Death Gun from the Anime series Sword Art Online II.

This one was supposed to be pretty easy: a mask, a cloak; maybe some arm coverings; he wasn’t allowed to bring costume weapons to school anyway.

Nothing is ever as easy as it’s supposed to be, though.

Death Gun reference image downloaded from tvtropes.com

We started with a foam head from the craft store, and a cool material called Sculpt-a-Mold. This is basically a mix of paper pulp and plaster. After mixing water to form a pasty consistency, you can form arbitrary shapes out of it. Because of the plaster, it dries in only half an hour; but the paper fibers make it much less brittle than plain plaster.

After many iterations of shaping and sanding, we identified a few fatal flaws with the approach. The mask was relatively heavy, but it was still too brittle to attach straps securely to it. More importantly, starting with a head-sized base meant that the mask fit too tightly on Ezra’s face, making it impossible to breathe or even open his mouth.

Solving this problem turned out to be a great excuse to get a 3d printer. There was a model available on Thingiverse available, so all we needed to do was print, assemble, and paint it.

Even 3d printers that work well are a bit fiddly and require adjustment, experimentation, and maintenance to produce good results. I didn’t start printing this mask until I was confident I’d get good results, and overall, it succeeded. I didn’t have any completely failed prints, but there was a bit of underextrusion in the chin pieces, which led to a piece breaking off on Halloween night.

3d printed Death Gun mask based on a model from Thingiverse

The lenses were thin plastic from packaging material, painted with Testors transparent red paint. We just glued them in, instead of using the lens holder pieces included in the 3d model. The mask itself was glued together using 5 minute epoxy, primed grey, and painted with craft acrylics. I didn’t make any effort to smooth the surface prior to painting, and it turned out fine. The printing layers aren’t really visible, but the polygonal facets of the 3d model can be seen in the finished product.

The cloak was made from a pattern and fabric found at Jo-Ann Fabrics. We tried several techniques to get arm wraps like Ezra wanted, but they didn’t work well, so we abandoned that. Under the cloak, he wore all black, with the black strap chest harness we made for the Gaara costume.

This wasn’t the most satisfying costume project, but it turned out well,

NERF Mod and Repaint: Ezra’s Velocity Mod

This spring, Ezra had an idea for a NERF blaster mod: graft a battery powered flywheel onto a barrel extension, to accelerate darts shot from a spring-powered blaster. This is the result.

We cut off the front of a Rebelle flywheel blaster and part of a Modulus barrel extension, and joined them by epoxying them to a plastic bulkhead. Each half was attached separately, so the whole thing could be disassembled and reassembled easily using the original screws. The most challenging part was keeping parts aligned when joining to the bulkhead, to maintain a straight path for the dart. In retrospect, it probably would’ve been easier if we had temporarily installed the internal barrel parts and used a dowel to keep everything in alignment.

Internals, showing the switch placement, battery pack, flywheel, and front barrel segment.

Mod assembled and fit to a blaster, prior to painting

After constructing the mod, Ezra also wanted to repaint it to match, as well as repainting a blaster to match. He wanted a bit of a “postapocalyptic junk” aesthetic, so we chose a rusty brown and applied metallic highlights. The bright blue and orange parts were maintained for safety reasons.

Repainted barrel accelerator mod, disassembled; flywheel and battery pack visible at top

Repainted blaster, barrel, and shield parts

Now I just need a shot of the finished product!

After the glue joint broke the first time, we added screwed-on metal braces to hold the halves together. Next he wants a better stock and a spring power mod in the same blaster.

Halloween 2017: Ezra’s Gaara Costume

Woohoo, I’m not an entire year late yet! Since I have some newer projects I’d like to post, here’s an older one I haven’t gotten to yet.

Ezra’s Halloween costume for 2017 was Gaara: a character from the Anime/Manga series Naruto. The main props we needed to build for this costume were his sand gourd, and the leather bandolier. The clothing portions were all done with street clothing for simplicity.

Here are a few pictures of the finished costume, with a few more showing how it was constructed and made to work.

Gaara costume, back Gaara manipulates sand, and so he always carries with him a giant gourd-shaped container made of sand. This prop defines the character, but it’s huge and potentially unwieldy. Construction was theoretically simple: use paper mache. However, it wasn’t easy.

As a base, we used punching ball balloons, chosen because they’re larger and thicker than ordinary balloons. For our first few attempts, we taped the balloons together before applying paper mache. This was a problem when one of the balloons deflated, and the half-finished shell shrank and wrinkled. Extracting the bad half and replacing it didn’t work well, so we eventually ended up building up the second balloon separately and attaching them with masking tape and then paper mache after the shell was hard.

Gaara's sand gourd prop — Gaara’s sand gourd prop

The cork on top was a natural cork from the craft store, and the lip was formed using Crayola Model Magic, which is basically an air-dried clay with the consistency of foam. It’s easy to work with, light, and takes paint well.

The whole giant peanut was painted tan, and then the seals were painted on after tracing the outline from a stencil, and cracks were hand-drawn.

Gourd harness — Test fitting the gourd harness. It’s usually worn under his shirt.

After the gourd was completed, it was obvious that the decorative pleather bandolier would not be strong enough to support it without it sliding around and looking horrible. To solve this problem, I constructed a harness out of leftover nylon straps and buckles. The picture here shows Ezra trying on the harness for fit. In actual use, the harness went under his black shirt, and the attachment buckle went through a small hole in the shirt.

Gaara costume, side view — The leather bandolier and buckles are slightly clearer here

The buckle was sewn to the red sash around the gourd, and clipped onto the harness. This made it removable, so he could take it off at school, and supported the weight completely without putting any stress on the leather bandolier.

The leather bandolier was not difficult: I made a pattern out of paper, cut, and sewed it up. The multiple matching metal buckles came from a snakeskin leather purse from the thrift store, and were hot-glued into place.

The pleather came from one of our many trips to Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse, and the white sash and foot wraps were muslin cloth. He rounded it out with red hair dye and Halloween face paint for the eye liner. The forehead tattoo worked better with acrylic paint than cheap Halloween face paint.

Wooden Weapons

The kids aren’t allowed to get wooden weapons at the Renaissance Festival, because then I don’t get to make them.

A wooden hammer (maul) prop I made for Ezra’s Dwarf costume. Wooden curtain rod, pine wood head, craft foam and fake leather on the handle.

Details of the hammer head show the Gunnerkrigg Court symbol carved into the side of the head, just as Ezra requested.

Short swords for Martine’s Ranger costume. Pine board blades, and masonite reinforcement at the hilt. Handles wrapped with pleather.

Games with Ezra, Part 1

Ezra, about to start a game of Hordes of the Things.

My son Ezra is now 5 years old, and he has enjoyed playing games of all sorts for as long as he’s been able to play. Here are some of the games we have enjoyed playing together so far.

He has a great capacity for learning game mechanics, and a long enough attention span to finish a game that he’s truly interested in. Most of the time he’s able to handle loss well enough to want to play again. The biggest challenge I’ve had in finding good games to play has been that he’s only just starting to learn to read.

For now I’m limiting this list to games that adults can play with kids, and those that are surprisingly appropriate for children (or at least for Ezra) instead of the ones everyone knows work well with kids. This isn’t a game review, and I won’t be teaching how to play the games; but I will mention any changes we made to make the games more playable.

Cartagena

One of the first “real” games we played together was Cartagena. When we first started playing, I removed the “move backwards to draw cards” mechanic and turned it into a “play one, draw one” game. This helped him learn the mechanics and the strategy of skipping over full spots to move forward more quickly. In the last year or so, we’ve started playing with the full rules instead, but we don’t play as often as we did.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is fairly commonly known to be good with kids, except for the farmer scoring mechanic. The Hunters and Gatherers version can work a bit better, because scoring hunters is a bit easier, but I find it to be a bit more bland, and young kids still have a hard time thinking ahead far enough to know whether to place a hunter or not.

Castle Panic

And our third entry in “Games that start with CA” is by far Ezra’s favorite and most played game. At its height we were playing for hours on end, and I’d get sick of it before he did, but at this point he rarely maintains interest long enough to finish a session anymore.

Castle Panic is especially good with young kids, because it is a cooperative game. You play with open hands, make plans together, and accomplish goals with each others’ help. We both prefer playing this one with the Wizard’s Tower expansion. Although there are cards with words, they all have unique pictures, and when we were playing this game regularly, Ezra could recognize and summarize every card in the base set even though he wasn’t really reading any of them. The most challenging aspect of this game, for grown-ups and kids alike, is to make plans for your whole turn before you start trading in your cards.

HeroQuest

Marla found a copy of HeroQuest at a yard sale for around $3, and it was a great investment. I’ve finished more dungeons with Ezra than I have with adults. We played this one semi-cooperatively: I played the dungeon master and controlled the two spellcasting characters under Ezra’s guidance as the party leader. He controlled the barbarian and dwarf: Kick in the door, and kill whatever’s on the other side of it! When there were decisions to be made involving traps and searching, I had Ezra make the decisions since he wasn’t looking at the map.

Heroica

I’m not sure what it is about Heroica that encourages just about everyone who plays it to make up new rules and change the ones that are already there. This is an incredibly simple dungeon crawl with no reading required, and it also has Lego, so how could any kid refuse? It’s theoretically competitive, but realistically players are usually leap-frogging each other through the dungeon.

Lionheart

I found Lionheart at a yard sale before I had any kids, and for years I attempted to trade it away. I’m glad I didn’t, because it has been a lot of fun with Ezra. This is a board-based miniature wargame for 2 players. The mechanics are easy to pick up, and the combat doesn’t even require math skills. I expect it’d be hard to find these days, but it’s a lot more worth playing than I expected it would be.

Dune Express

This is a fun little print-and-play area control game. It has no language components used during gameplay, and there isn’t much for players to remember. We play the basic rules, but haven’t had to make any changes to play well together.

Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is a quick “push your luck” game with simple rules. Ezra’s good at managing his risk in this game, and he’s just as likely to win as any adult.

Zombies!!!

For Zombies, we skip the event cards, and there are no other language dependent components used during play. This makes the game a bit less fun and flavorful, and it can take longer without the help of additional weapons, so I also reduce the number of board sections we need to get through before reaching the helicopter.

Dungeon!

I’m only listing Dungeon here because it was a major disappointment, and did not meet our expectations. It’s too simplistic for Ezra, he gets bored too quickly. There aren’t enough decisions to make, and there is very little character development. For a simple, fast dungeon crawl, we prefer Heroica.

En Garde

This one is listed for ages 14+, but that’s ridiculous. The truth is, almost every game with plastic or metal parts produced today must list an age of 13+ or 14+ because they cannot afford to have their pieces tested for toxicity. We play the simple or slightly advanced versions of the rules, with no other changes.

Uno

I don’t love Uno, but there were some times when Ezra couldn’t get enough of it; and he consistently beat both his parents and his sister. He also likes Harry Potter Uno, or Crazy Eights if there aren’t any Uno cards around.

Loot

I’ve played this with both kids a few times, but it isn’t that good with only 2 players.

The Sorceror’s Cave

This is one of the first dungeon crawl games I played with Ezra. It’s extremely dependent on good luck to succeed, which totally drove away Martine. Ezra fared better and enjoyed playing it, but we quickly moved on to other games with a similar theme.

Wings of War

Ezra loves starting games of Wings of War, but rarely finishes them. He likes playing with the plane miniatures, and isn’t very good at flying predictably. But early on, he shot me down the first time our planes were within shooting range, so maybe that’s why he keeps coming back…

Hordes of the Things

I’ve started introducing Ezra to a few different miniature games, but at this point I have to wait until he asks to play so I don’t drive him away with my enthusiasm. He has finished several games of Hordes of the Things, using all of the rules (all of the rules that happen to come up) but with a limited set of elements. The easy way I’ve found to introduce young kids to the game is to limit element selection to only about 3-4 types of elements, either all foot or all mounted. Kids can remember 3-4 different combat factors, but it requires a chart if you need to remember different factors vs. foot and vs. mounted. We played HOTT using Mechwarrior prepainted figures, limiting element selection to Behemoth, Knight, Rider, and Hero.

I’ll write more as we discover more games worth playing, but I expect we will soon start opening many more boxes once Ezra starts reading.

Game Review: Small World

After hearing the Small World review on the d6 Generation Podcast, I picked up a copy. This is a solid, interesting game. But since there are better choices to play on game night, I expect I’ll usually end up playing this one with the kids.

I would definitely recommend listening to the d6 Generation review for more details, but I’ll summarize the game play here. Small World is a basic area-control game with a humorous fantasy theme. The world is populated by elves, dwarves, giants, and other fantasy creatures, but there just isn’t enough room for everyone to live side by side in peace.

The game uses a different map depending on how many people are playing, so the world is the correct size for any number of players from 2 to 5. Game play is simple: collect your troop tokens, leaving one in each territory you control; and then place them on new territories to take control of them. Each territory requires 2 tokens for the space plus one for each troop or passive fortification on the space. If another player’s tokens are removed, they lose one and replace the rest as reinforcements at the end of the turn. This population displacement mechanic makes it clear that this is a civilization-building game, and not a wargame. At the end of each turn, you gain victory points based on how many territories you control.

There is no randomness during game play. The only randomness is in the mechanic that also generates the game’s replayability: the races and special abilities. At the start of the game, 5 races are turned up, along with a special ability for each. Both the race and the special ability affect the number of troops required to capture a territory, the availability of passive defenses, and the number of victory points awarded for each space. For example, Commando Wizards have the “Commando” special ability, which reduces the number of troops required to take each space by one; and the “Wizard” special ability, which gives an extra victory point for controlling magic spots on the board.

There are quite a few different races and special abilities, and they’re randomly combined. This produces many different combinations of game effects to choose from each time you play.

The game mechanics are simple, there is no randomness to speak of, and no hidden information is used during game play. The current VP total is hidden, but best left secret until the end of the game anyway. There is minimal reading required, mainly to figure out what each race and special ability does, but even if not all players can read, it’s fine to have one person explain things to the others. And the game only lasts about an hour, plus or minus 20 minutes.

For all of these reasons, this makes an unexpectedly good game for youngsters. The recommended age range is 8+, but Martine and her friend Levi have played with no problems at age 6+ (first grade).

I expect there’s a bit more strategy to explore in multiple plays with adult opponents and higher player counts, but I think this game will come out more often with the kids except as a short duration filler game with adults.

Master of None

Alan Ferrency writes about things.

Category: kids