It’s a long time since I fell off a skateboard.
Blue Crue paint it pink – how very gender neutral.
This Spray-Fiti game (very much WIP or Work In Progress) developed out of my Spl-Attack boardgame gridded wargame / chessboard version of Nintendo’s Splatoon video game.
If Spla-fiti has a video game ancestor, this would be Subway Surfers, see the game trailer at https://youtu.be/tYysQOHTimo
It is another exploration of my interest in non-lethal ‘war’ games.
The Aim
** youth skateboard graffiti stereotype alert **
Here the game aim is to cover as much of the city walls with your own side’s graffiti art as you can, avoiding capture by the City Police and overspraying and replacing the graffiti of the rival skate crew where possible.
The Police and the Council Cleaners turn up after 2 x d6 turns to try and restore law and order, clean up the streets etc.
A range of player options – two skateboard crews versus each other
or one skate crew versus 1 police unit and / or council clean up unit.
Or two skateboard crews versus the city police and city council unit.
Victory Conditions? – At the end of so many turns (e.g. throw 2 or 3 d6) count up how many grafitti panels in your colour you have sprayed.
If you are the Council clean up team, you might have taken down and cleaned up more graffiti than the skate gangs sprayed or oversprayed.
WIP Rules Spla-fiti 1.0
You can MOVE one figure in a turn or you can SPRAY a wall in a turn but cannot do both.
IGOYUGO
Council staff and Police on foot are slower (moving two squares each turn) than skaters on boards (moving four squares).
Jumping up obstacles costs half the move.
Note: Adjust the following distances as you see fit.
Spraying a wall panel takes one turn (attach graffiti panel in your crew colour).
Respraying the other crew’s work takes one turn – change their graffiti panel for one of yours. Keep theirs in your base pile.
The Council repainting the wall also takes one turn. Council players – remove the grafitti panel and keep it.
You have limited or unlimited spray cans as you see fit (the Spla-fiti equivalent of ammunition). I have not added cans to the skaters’ hands yet.
Melee?
There is no melee fighting phase. If you choose to crash into another skater and knock them out of a game, a d6 dice throw of 1 knocks out another skater and yourself. However savings throws are thrown for both you and the other skater. Less than 6 knocks out the skater or yourself. 6 is unhurt.
You can decide for how long you or the other skater are out of the game until you respawn at home base.
“Green Teem” make the city streets uncleen with their grafitti tagging – easy!
I didn’t have a big enough chessboard for it to work with 54mm skater figures and their cardboard city buildings so I drew up two cardboard grey city street grids with squares the same size as my chessboard.
To get that rundown urban feel, I made some simple city retail or industrial buildings out of biscuit boxes turned inside out to get the cardboard side. I improvised some downtown urban clutter and street furniture.
The City Council clean up, removing spray-fiti and repainting the city walls.
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Here you can see the magnetic strip by which the spray-fiti or graffiti panels are attached.
I tried the self adhesive magnet strips inside the card buildings to keep outer walls clean but it did not work so well as direct contact with the graffiti panels which have a small square of magnet strip on the back.
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Council Teams clean up the city walls. These are represented by flamethrower figures, repurposed to repaint the city walls.
The police officers are there to catch the skater grafitti artists. They can arrest skaters (if you can catch them) and take them individually away back to an off board jail square (or you can add a set-to-stun “Tazer” option.)
I have yet to add in programmed random NPC (non player character) city types to get in the way (from model railway civilians etc) – a chance to add in my hollow-cast lead tramp figure as a hobo etc.
Before anyone mentions it …
Keith Haring and other graffiti artists like Banksy might classify as Art.
I’m not endorsing spray-painting, graffiti art and tagging, much of the time in the wrong place it just looks ugly.
I did smile at the chalked-up message on the passageway walls into Shepherds Market in London when the Tradition of London toy soldier shop was still there. It simply said in big chalk letters – Cheer Up! It made others walking past smile reading it too.
However much I dislike graffiti in the wrong place, I enjoyed doing the mini graffiti panels. Some were based on examples I found online. In others, there are a few wargamers’ names or initials amongst ones for family and friends here “Tagged in This Photo”. Particularly proud of DF62 and PL15!
Sk8r figures are by AJ’s Toy Boarders – all sold out and now hard to find. I picked up a green and blue pack years ago online, along with their surfer dudes which I found second hand. You may now find them in set 1 and 2 together in tubs at Vat19 in the USA who ship reasonably cheaply to the UK:
https://www.vat19.com/item/toy-boarders-skateboard-figurines
All 8 of the different skateboard move poses are shown here, as listed on the card header. Pushing, Nosegrab, Smith, Cruising 1 and Cruising 2, Manual, Tailgrab and Ollie. Sounds like weird gang names.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN July 2020
B.P.S. Blog Post Script
All Sk8r Boys? Sorry Avril Lavigne, sadly there was no skater girl in set 1, she was in set 2 which I couldn’t find for sale online.
If I don’t buy more skaters from VAT19, I might be able to improvise one or two female skateboarders from 54mm model railway civilians on coffee stirrer boards (with cocktail stick wheels?)
Some of the model railway figure sets by Noch and Preiser have roller skaters, inline skaters and skateboarders in HO OO for tiny city scapes.
For a few clues on colours and “uniform painting”, you can now check out the slightly dated ‘skate punk’ music videos by Avril Lavigne such as Sk8r Boi from the early 2000s: https://youtu.be/TIy3n2b7V9k
Man of Tin blog 