A Clockwork Mouse

Had an old mouse. Had a broken mechanical clock. So what do I do with them?

 I cut the body of the mouse in half down to but not including the base and removed the rear part. When chopping up a mouse body, if you want to use the original buttons, it's important not to take off too much from the rear. The buttons attach well back in the body.

For the front of the mouse, I painted it copper, then did the middle button in gold for contrast. The remaining section of mouse behind the buttons is upholstered with a scrap of leather, while the sides are veneered with wood. The key is something I picked up at the craft store.

The rear is the workings of the old clock, cut to fit with a Dremmel and decorated with a variety of additional and repositioned gears and other components.

One of the nice things about this one is that when it's plugged in, the red glow of the LED is visible from the rear, but there's not a glare because it has to reflect through several layers of gears and structural bits.

Heroine Control Pads

So those hero descriptions I wrote up to give a little gender balance to Axis of Villains? I slapped together some control pads to print out for them. Anyone with actual graphic design skill could do vastly better, but these are, at least, functional. Created at 300 dpi, they come out of my printer reasonably legibly.

Hawkgirl

Huntress

Oracle

Vixen

Wonder Woman

Zatanna

So now there can be more playable women for Axis of Villains than men.

Gratuitous Bat-Symbol

I saw some electroluminescent wire and thought "That'd be cool for the Batcave. If I can think of something to do with it." And I did.

I got a piece of EL wire billed as yellow, though as you can see, it isn't. It's got a transparent yellow vinyl jacket, but the wire itself seems to glow blue, so it comes out green. Not what I was after, but I'll deal. I cut out a Bat symbol using the same technique as for the clock, drilled tiny holes through the edges at corners and what seemed like other important points, and used wire and thread to secure the EL wire to the symbol. How does it look? Well...

Pointless, but pretty cool.

A More Inclusive Axis

(This isn't quite a crafty thing. It implies craftiness, but that's really just printing out some scaled images and maybe gluing them to cardboard. But I couldn't think of a better place to put this, so here it is.)

I got Wonder Forge's DC-licensed Axis of Villains game, sold by Target as part of this summer's Justice League push. There are comic book fans in the house, and my lovely and talented spouse prefers cooperative games like Castle Panic, so I thought I'd give it a shot. From a game design point of view, there's nothing wrong with it. It's a cooperative game with simple mechanics: Villains, who come in sets matched to the heroes in play during any given game, move according to die rolls and special card draws. Heroes move to intercept them and beat a target number with a die roll in order to capture them and remove them from play. There's some nice chrome in the form of cards which allow the heroes to trigger individual special abilities; they can also "team up" and combine their rolls, necessary to defeat some of the particularly powerful villains. I give them credit for not underestimating the intelligence of children; they recommend the game for ages 8+, but I've seen games of similar complexity rated for 12+ or even 14+.

So far, so good. There's a problem with the hero selection, though. All dudes: Supes, Bats, Flash, and GL, the chick-free quartet DC has been pushing on their JL merchandise lately. This should be irksome to any right-thinking person, but it's particularly irksome to my Wonder Woman-loving wife who, if she's going to be pretending to be a comic book superhero, would like to play her favorite comic book superhero thankyewverymuch. But as someone who has been tinkering with fun but somehow unsatisfactory games since white box D&D (for those who weren't around for the early editions of D&D in the 70s, let me just say: uphill both ways, and get out of my yard), I can fix that problem.

To play female heroes, they need the same attributes as the existing ones: color, abilities, and villains. The villains are easy, at least as game pieces. Each hero has, mechanically, an identical set of villains. There are five villain pieces, covering the same range of values (odd numbers from 7 to 15), so it's just a question of attaching faces and names to the numbers. Special abilities are a little trickier, but not insurmountable. It's just a question of breaking down what the rules are and making tiny exceptions to them. The hard part, really, is the presentation. Color is tricky, but naming the villains has been harder. For some of these characters, it's not difficult to come up with a list of characters they've had long-term enmities with. For others, I've had a hard time coming up with a list of five bad guys distinctly associated with that hero and not already attached to someone else (consider the massive overlap between Gotham heroes and villains). The name of the villain is, game-mechanically, irrelevant, but if you're going to the trouble of playing, say, Huntress or Zatanna, you want to be fighting Mandragora or Felix Faust, not just "11" or "7." Where possible, I've provided a full list of five and suggested villain values. Where my knowledge of comics fails me, I've come up with powers in hopes that people who know more than me can fill in the non-mechanical details like villain names.

Here, then, are some other superheroes I've drafted for Axis of Villains. With these, you could play an all-female version of the game, or mix and match as you see fit. You'll need to make your own control pads, villain counters, and stand-ups for them using the ones that come with the game as templates, but the Internet is full of useful images. Good hunting!

(The following won't make any sense if you don't have the game, and I've had to invent some terminology anyway. Those of you who have played the game know that powers are keyed to two symbols on the control pads and power cards: a puffy impact cloud and a spiky explosion. Below, I refer to the former as "biff" and the latter as "pow.")

Wonder Woman
Color: White

Biff: Granter of Victories. When teaming up, if the villain's color matches any of the heroes', all roll two dice.

Pow: Golden Lasso. Select one villain in the same space or an adjacent one. That villain misses its next move. (Turn it face down to indicate that it misses a move, then face-up again after movement is called for in its sector.)

Villains:

Ares--15
Circe--13
Giganta--11
Cheetah--9
Dr. Psycho--7

Zatanna
Color: Black

Biff: Summoning. Move any villain in her sector to her space.

Pow: Pots! The villain she fights misses its next move, even if she loses the fight. (Turn it face down to indicate that it misses a move, then face-up again after movement is called for in its sector.)

Villains:

Brother Night--15
Poison Ivy--13
Felix Faust--11
Warlock of Ys--9
Dr. Light--7

Hawkgirl

Color: Orange

Biff: Battle Rage. If she loses in battle, Hawkgirl does not move back to the Satellite.

Pow: Nth Metal Mace. Hawkgirl may move any villain she fights back two spaces, even if she loses the fight.

Villains:

Hath-Set
Shadow Thief
Kite-man
The Monocle

Huntress

Color: Purple

Biff: Crossbow. Huntress may attack any villain in an adjacent space.

Pow: Motorcycle. Huntress may move up to four spaces farther than shown on the movement die.

Villains:

Mandragora
White Canary
Yasemin
Sicilian Mafioso

Oracle

Color: Glow-in-the-dark lime green


Biff: Coordination. Other players may use their powers during her turn.

Pow: Advanced Planning. When a <<>> card is to be drawn, draw three, select the one to be used, and return the others to the bottom of the deck.

Vixen

Color: Orange and yellow stripes


Biff: Eagle flight. Roll the movement die twice and take the higher number.

Pow: Rhino charge. Select a villain whose space she moves through during her turn and push it back to the outermost ring.