Hand Made Piecepacks- 5 bucks or less-Long

["Electronicwaffle" <electronicwaffle@...>]

I had a crude, yet usable piecepack, made out of paper and other 
items. It will suffice to get a "taste" of Piecepack

I went to the dollar store and used pieces there. ((I didnt go to 
the store knowing the bits I accquired there would turn into my PP))

You can make your own piecepack (perhaps 2 depending on what you 
find, and your luck) for 5 bucks.

I shop "Dollar Tree" and find their stores to be the best of the 
Dollar stores.

Go over to the "toy" section and plop down 1 buck for 10 dice (find 
the set that has 2 dice each in five colors). 

Then if your lucky, you can find a copy of the game Ludo. 
16 pawns 4 each in 4 colors. (oh and the Ludo board.. and an extra 
die). If not, there is bound to be other board games around the 
store. Im sure you can find something that will suffice.

Then head over to the office supply section. Buy 1 pack of notebook 
paper or computer paper. (you will only need 4 sheets) and one pack 
of index cards. Buy markers,(or colored pencils) scissors, and a 
ruler if you need to.

Now the fun begins.
The dice and pawns are already made for you. Thats the good news.
The bad news, Tiles and coins for the most part need to be done 
individualy.

Cut 12 index cards in half, and you have 24 tiles. Draw the grid on 
each one of these. Turn the tiles over and mark them the appropriate 
suit and value. I put the value in the middle and the suit to the 
upper left. (Backwards from how Mesomorph denotes their tiles).

Now the coins. If your still with me at this point, Its time for 
some more bad news. Your Coins will be triangular. Aside from the 
obvious difference, it will take a little longer to place the coins 
on the tiles. (The index card halves should hold 4 coins with room 
to spare).  Ok, this will be the hardest section, and will remind 
some of us of our school years. Paper Footballs. 

Fold one piece of paper in half, and then half again. (The other 
way, so it is now in fourths.) Then fold in half once more, so the 
final fold leaves the paper long and skinny. More of a rectangle 
less of a square. Crease all of the folds. Cut each one of these  
rectangles. 

Fold each rectangle as you would a flag (Take one corner of the 
rectangle, and fold it in to form a triangle, then fold this 
triangle over, and work the fold up in this way till you get to the 
end. You should end up with paper left over that can not fold into a 
triangle. Cut this left over part in half, leaving a part to tuck 
into the triangle.    

Have fun doing this last part 23 more times!!!

when complete, take your markers and color one side with the suit 
color, the other side denoted with the value.  (I simply put one dot 
in each of the three corners of the suit color, then on the reverse, 
I put one dot in the corner opposite the hypotenuse for an ace, the 
dot  in the hyp. and one other corner for two, three corners for 
three...    for four, same as three, with an extra dot in the hyp. 
five, like four, with one extra dot in another corner.  Nulls where 
easy enough, none at all.

The dots on the coins served two purposes. One, it looks really cool 
(reminded me of dominoes) Two, its a lot harder to remember which 
coin is which. In theory, you could remember that if one coin looked 
like this,,,,  then the otherside is..   This is real hard to do if 
you used just dots.


Okay and there you go. Way too much work yet before I got my 
Piecepack from Mesomorph I did just this.  If you have the choice, 
go with a "real" piecepack and not one you made yourself.