Cyborgs

So as a youth director I organize a lot of group games. Much of this blog has been about table top games. I'm going to start branching out to other forms of games too. Here is how you play the group game Cyborgs!

Scenario:

A group of cyborgs have traveled to earth to capture all of the human race so they can take them back to their home world and eat their blood and brains (middle school boys love the gore factor). The only way the cyborgs can be stopped is by being deprogrammed. Programming disks are hidden through out the building. Humans must hunt and find the programming disks and tag the cyborgs with them before all of the human-race is captured.

Roles:

Cyborgs: between 2 and 4 players play the role of the cyborg. The cyborgs run around trying to tag all of the humans. Usually the cyborgs wear a special shirt or jersey so they can be identified.Cyborgs are not allowed to touch the disks or move them. If they are to find a disk they can guard it. There are special rooms (safe rooms) that the cyborgs can not inter. There is a "cage" that the cyborgs can also guard where humans must go after they have been caught (tagged).

Humans: everyone not playing as a cyborg plays as a human. Humans get a 30 second head start at the beginning of the game before the cyborgs are activated. Humans need to find the disks to deprogramming the cyborgs without being caught. There are safe rooms where humans can hind to regroup. If a human is caught (tagged) by a cyborg they must zombie walk to the "cage". If you are in the cage the game is not over for you. A team mate can come and tag you out but watch out a cyborg is probably guarding the cage area.

Set up:
 Before the game starts a nonplayer must go around and hid CDs to use as deprogramming disks. The game is typically played in the dark. Before the game begins out-of-bounds areas need to be established as well as safe-zones and the cage area. To begin play humans get a 30 second head start on the cyborgs. If humans are having trouble finding the disks the nonplayer that hid them can give hints.

Have fun playing! 

Homemade Nok Hockey Table

I made an earlier post about my love for Nok Hockey (you can check that out here).

Working as a youth director I asked one of my parents to build a Nok Hockey table for the youth. Here is what he came back with!

This is a beautiful hand crafted Nok Hockey Table. It fits well on either side of our 4 by 8 ping pong table. I got the instructions for making it from instructables.com (check it out here). This is a doable DIY project for someone with some wood working equipment. If you don't feel like making the puck and sticks you can by them off amazon (check it out here).

The biggest complaint about the table is that when you played it is really loud and it is hard to score. I came up with a simple solution for both of these complaints. Instead of playing with a puck we play with a small ball.

 We usually play with a plastic golf ball. A normal ping pong ball is too light. Something that has been frustrating me about the beer pong craze is that people have started selling beer pong balls. These balls look similar to ping pong balls but they are smaller, heavier, cheaply made, and sometimes not very round. They are really cheap but even for someone like me who is terrible at ping pong they are impossible to play ping pong with (here is an example of a set). These balls are frustrating because it makes in nearly impossible to find a decent set of cheap ping pong balls. I have found 2 things these balls work well with (someone gave me 5 or 6 of them). The ones that are truly round work well as Foosball balls and in Nok Hockey. They also work okay for little kid carnival games. 

Really playing table hockey with a ball makes sense. I don't know why someone hasn't marketed this yet. When people play street hockey or roller hockey they use a ball so maybe now Nok Hockey is to street hockey as air hockey is to ice hockey. I think a small wooding ball might work well too. I think if someone did some research they could design a table top ball hockey game that played VERY similarly to an air hockey game and they could market the game to schools and community centers and turn a nice profit.

Carpet Ball

Most beloved table games were created in one of two places. Either in a dimly lit pub in somewhere or at a summer camp during the hot days of July. Here we have a game from the latter. Carpet pool is a game played by summer campers for probably 2 generations. Now no great came room is complete without it. It is a fast game requiring you to throw! (ideally role) pool balls down a table to knock off your opponent's balls.

 

 There are websites offering to sell you a professional carpet ball set for between $1,000 and $2,000 but most of the tables out there are homemade. Just go down to your local hardware store and start buying supplies. If you need help with construction here are some sites to check out:

 http://www.youthstory.org/2011/03/how-to-build-carpet-ball-carpetball.html

http://www.carpetball.net/carpetball_tables.htm 

http://www.stanford.edu/~cammat/cgi-bin/carpetball/ 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Outdoor-Carpet-Ball-Table-Also-Called-Gutter-Bal/ 

Before I start getting hate mail lets clear up a few things. The game is called both carpet ball and carpetball. It is sometimes call carpet pool. There is no official length a table can be anywhere from 8 ft to 16 ft long. There are no uniform way you most set up the balls rules are loose. The only rule everyone seems to play with is if a ball goes off the table you automatically loose! Besides that have fun. 

Building one of these tables is on my to-do list. I have a space set aside in the youth room at church to place one of these tables. I want to try setting up some different cue games (see my old post on Pub Billiards). So I am going to construct one with low side rails so a cue stick can be easily used.

Bottlecap Bocce

So we all love the wonderful game of Bocce. If you have never heard of the game of bocce check out this video below:

So this is a new game I created the other night. My wife and I have been playing it and have found it to be great fun. It is played on a tabletop (any smooth tabletop will work) with 1 small bottle cap, a set of milk jug bottle-caps, and some type of cue stick.

All I had were blue milk jug lids so I took a sharpe and marked three of them purple and three black. The next time I am by a recycling bin I'll get some red bottle caps. The small bottle cap acts as the targetball. It is placed on the table before the round starts. A Cue line is set in which players must cue off behind. Then players take turns shooting their caps similar to bocce.

 

 

 The only special rule needed is for when the target-cap goes off the table. I play that if the target-cap goes off the table the caps are returned to were they were before and the cap just hit is removed from play. 

I've been using a metal dowel rod that was sitting around my apartment when I moved it. A wooded dowel rod would work well; they only cost a dollar or two. You could also probably use a cheap cue stick from Walmart. This is a fun and simple game so give it a shot! 

 

Be Creative Ping Pong

I found this video and these guys look like they are having a lot of fun.

Basically they just find random stuff to use as ping pong paddles. I give them a A for creativity. So the next time you want to play ping pong but don't have paddles handy take a lead from these guys: grab a book (I think a hardback book would work better than a softback) or some boxes or whatever.

So if you are REALLY broke and want to play some ping pong really bad here's what you do. Go find a table, any table but you probably want a larger table, sometimes you can find these set beside dumpsters or under the free section on Craigslist. Then go find some cardboard; there is usually plenty of this in the recycling bin, and make one of my patented ping pong nets. Then find a ping pong ball; it is okay if it is dented this video can show you what to do (I just did this the other day it actually works):  

Then find some old books, a lot of times at thrift stores they have old books they are giving away, to use as paddles and you are ready to play!

My Homemade Ping Pong Table

So here it is my homemade ping pong table. People have been really impressed that I made a table instead of going out and buying one but this really was a simple afternoon project.

To start with a confession: The table is 4 feet by 8 feet. This is not regulation size. A regulation size table is 5 ft by 9 ft. With that said this is nearly regulation size. It is actually closer than any table that I have found for sell that were not regulation. For some reason you can buy regulation size tables then you can buy tables that are 6 ft by 3.5 ft or smaller. The table is this size for 2 reason. 1 this is the size boards come in at Lowes Hardware. 2 I did not have a lot of space. As you can see this size fits will behind the couch in this room.
 So what did I do: I went and bought a 1/2 inch 4 by 8 sheet of particle board at Lowes. The sheet cost less than 20 dollars. The board is really heavy (it takes 2 people to move!) and part of the reason I taped the sides with white duct tape was because the sides are easily damaged. The surface though is really solid.

I painted it with primer paint combo. I could have primed the board and then painted and that would have been a dollar or two cheaper maybe. If you have some primer laying around go get the sample size paint at Lowes Hardware. The board does not take must paint because it is such a smooth surface. I have seen people buy the board and not paint it or draw cool pictures on it with Sharpies. The paint was just so the table would look more legit.   

The sides are taped with white duct tape. The lines down the middle are taped with masking tape. The masking tape is probably going to pill and I will need to re-tape it. I might go with a different type of tape in the future but this works for now.

  The table is set on a cheap set of plastic saw horses these cost around $30. This way I can lean the table top against the wall and fold the legs up and the table will take up next to no space with not being used. Lowes sells adjustable saw horses which would mean you could adjust your table up and down if you wanted.

If the table starts to bow I might come back and frame the bottom out. 

So for this project I had to buy the particle board, the saw horses, some paint, some duct tape, and the paddle and ball set (I bought these from the evil empire aka Walmart). I purchased all of this for well under $100.

The table has been great fun. The paint tends to turn the ball green but the more we play on it the less than happens. The cardboard net really is a lot of fun to play on. It is really unforgiving. A lot of players ask if it is taller because most ping pong nets sag over time and this does not. The ball makes a really loud popping sound when it hits the cardboard and with a traditional net if the ball touches the net it slows down but here the ball bounces off this adds an new dimension to the game. I have come to enjoy playing with a cardboard net a lot more than playing with a traditional net.   

Nok Hockey

http://www.amazon.com/Carrom-2-01-Champion-Nok-Hockey-Standard/dp/B00003G1U1/ref=sr_1_1?s=sporting-goods&ie=UTF8&qid=1358794563&sr=1-1&keywords=Nok-Hockey

I need to start this post by taking a trip down memory lane. When I was a small gamer I participated in a Summer day camp program. I have very few positive memories from these day camps. I just didn't enjoy the other kids. Many of the positive memories have to do with this game. Nok Hockey is like regular air hockey only there is no air and the pucks are shaped differently and a goalie is provided.   

It is really hard to explain why this game is so much fun. Honestly for the price of one of these table (between $30 and $70) you could buy an entry level air hockey table that required batteries and made noise.

This game is just simple, plan fun. Chances are if you ever owned one of these you still own one of these. They don't break. The batteries never die (because there aren't any). There is something special about the basic blue and red colors and the printed hockey guy. Whoever originally designed this thing did a great job the puck slides well and bounces off stuff well.

If you have one of these things barred in your closet pull it out and plop it on top of your coffee table you might find yourself enjoying it.

This brings me to my discussion of the importance being earnest. Nok Hockey is not air hockey. It is not the big fancy air hockey table I play at the arcade. It also isn't trying to be. The problem I have with mini versions of games is that they often times try to be just like the larger version of a game even though they are not. Be yourself. Take things people like about larger expensive games and apply those characteristics in your own smaller version of a game.

Nok Hockey and pub billiard games, which I've talked about in older posts, are great examples of being similar to full size games (have some of the same characteristics as their full size counterparts) while still doing their own thing and doing their own thing well.

3-way ping pong picture!

  

Here it finally is. A picture of three way ping pong table using homemade cardboard nets. This is a fun and cheap way to play ping pong on these round folding tables. 

The nets are 6 inches high. I had to pull out the Pythagorean Theorem to measure them correctly. The triangle has a base of 4 inches and the diagonal lengths are about 6 5/16 inches. 

I keep a role of painters tape handy and I usually tape the crack with painters tape so the crack won't interfere with the game.  I also have players rotate around the table every time a point is scored is another good way to keep everything even.

This is part of the "any table any time" ping pong movement. 

note: this table is for show. There are far better places to play ping pong!