Brain Drain from Tomy is a simple timed question game. On your turn, you have to answer a question as quickly as possible and hit the time clock. Then the other player goes. The player whose time clock runs out first is the loser.

Only, the time clock is a pair of zombies whose brains get “sucked” out of their heads when they run out of time. Pretty freaky, and, if the game isn’t worth anything, I can still see a myriad of uses for the clock.

(source)

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I have my own ideas as to what to do with unwanted board games, but plenty of folks around the world like to take those games with the missing pieces and turn them into works of craft.

Scrabble tiles are sold on eBay in bulk for mosaics, earrings, and the like, and various companies create jewelery and other items out of cards and pawns.

Eco-chic points us to this Flickr set displaying old board game boards turned in to coasters, and then gives several other suggestions. Planet Green does the same. For some boards, you can just frame them and hang them on your wall.

Of course, plenty of people also take old crafts and turn them into board games.

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Zodiak is a board game of business training from Paradigm Learning.

The game takes half a day to play with a facilitator, and teaches various skills about training, product development, captial investment, pricing, and so on. The game simulates three year-rounds of business ups and downs. Following the game you get a two-hour discussion session.

Versions of the game exist for industry, government, and EVA (economic value added) industries. It has been translated into various languages and run in half a dozen countries.

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Hasbro released four games to XBox Live: Battleship, Connect Four, Scrabble, and Yahtzee. Grumbling accompanied the release, as each game costs $10, a staggering $40 for all of them. The physical games cost less, and previous releases on other platforms included several other games for the same price. And these games are so old hat already, who really needs them that badly on the XBox?

Fungames4Me has released a PC version of Sequence. The symbols are changed, and there is no reference to the board game publisher, so I’m wondering what the publisher thinks of it.

Here’s a positive review of Monopoly World’s release onto the N-Gage.

More about Scrabble’s upcoming release for the DS and PSP.

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I ran across this article on making silicon moulds for gaming terrain and it occurred to me that there are a ton of great resources for making miniature game terrain, yet no one ever bothers to post a list. There are a number of commercial terrain vendors that are worth spending some time with (Terranscapes , Hirst Arts, Dwarven Forge and Armorcast to name a few), but there’s something inherently rewarding about making your own. So I present to you, as a public service no less, our list of the best resources for terrain making:

• Terragenesis – No list would be complete without the ever-impressive Terragenesis. Likely the oldest site on this list, Terragenesis has gone from being a basic list of user submitted terrain builds to a full community site dedicated to helping people build awesome terrain
• Terrain Thralls – The Terrain Thralls are a terrain-building offshoot of the disgustingly talented Brush Thralls (a group of shockingly good painters with an interest in Privateer Press models); much of the terrain covered is geared towards the Iron Kingdoms, but the techniques apply in any genre
• Terrain Monster – Terrain Monster is an infrequently updated blog dedicated to building terrain – mostly focused on GW fantasy, but the author occasionally branches out into other interesting games
• Void Gamers – This is a bit of a more general gaming site, but it has a relatively robust terrain section with some instructions – not the best link on this list, but not shabby
• Terrainosaur – More of a terrain gallery than a how to site, Terrainosaur does some great work and provides work in progress details on many of the projects (which you should selfishly use in your own projects!)
• The Holocron – Totally dedicated to the Star Wars Miniatures and the Starship Battles games, the Holocron also features some of the best map making you’re likely to see (and they’ve got resources for 3d terrain as well)

And just to make you sick at how good some people are, here’s a link to Gale Force 9’s terrain gallery (it makes me feel better to know that they cheat and use lasers…). Many people aren’t aware that they have a side business making game tables for conventions and shows – and their work is just spectacular (the Daily Planet table will always stand out as one of my favorites).

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