Pipeline

Introduction

As I've mentioned in an earlier post I've recently been inspired by some older games for this blog. Mainly, family games that have been moderately destroyed because of water damage. I'll try to post about games that I rediscover, as well as the games that are pretty much destroyed. Previously I talked about the two games I acquired: APBA Baseball (1951,1975) (which was almost entirely ruined), and Pipeline (1988) (which had the board and rules discarded). This post is going to talk about rebuilding the Pipeline game, as well as pulling pieces from two more games over this weekend: Solarquest (1985) and Midnight Party (1989).

Pipeline (1988): "A game that combines strategy, tactic(s?), and luck -
making this game absorbing, challenging, and fun!"

Pipeline

My intention in these posts is less about game play and more about reconstruction (without expense), but here's the gist of game play (fully available on BGG):

The objective is to create a pipeline from the center of the board ("oil well") to an oil tanker's "loading dock" square. Each player draws a hand of 5 pipes and plays one per turn, replenishing only when their hand is empty. The oil derricks are meant to obstruct straight paths to victory.

This was Games Magazine's 1992 Game of the Year, and was a bit of an anomaly because it is the only game ever produced from its designer and publisher. Personally I don't recall great game experiences playing this, but it seemed like a good game to try cleaning up first.

Pieces destroyed:

• Game board
• Rules

Pieces recovered:

• Game tiles:
• 120 Straight Pipes
• 37 Elbow Pipes (I had 38)
• 27 T-Pipes
• 11 Cross Pipes
• 5 Plugs
• 4 tile stands
• 1 6-sided Die (only to determine starting player - really?)
• 1 Cloth bag

As mentioned previously, all the pieces were first washed off cleaned up and counted. This also gave a good way of assessing the condition of everything. I also threw the cloth bag into the washer and dryer.

Cleaning tiles and tile racks.

Alterations and Reconstruction

I'm reconstructing these games solely with the intention of making the games playable again at this point, and not trying for accurate game reproductions. If a game garners enough interest (or if the product is more meaningful to me), I'll aim toward investing more into making the game look nicer, but for the time being the board is constructed with heavy card stock, drawn over using a ruler and rapidograph pen.

Originally these were fixed to the board. I made them
into additional tokens instead. [Instagram]

Another thing I'm doing for the purposes of this game is componentizing the pieces a little more. When first drawing out the 15 x 15 board (as 9 5x5 squares), I came to the realization that drawing the oil well and oil derricks would restrict the grid to only be used for this game, and would additionally restrict the configuration options. Considering my memories of this game are pretty meh to begin with, I wanted to make the pieces a little more flexible if there was a better way to configure the board.

Pipeline was never a very flashy game to begin with :-/

The original board also had colors set in the board for the players, but this seemed unnecessary considering people would sit in front of their part of the board anyways. I may add color back in, if only so people can diversify their loading dock positions, but it hardly seems worth it at this point.

Next Games / Conclusion

All that's left of Solarquest and Midnight Party.

When I went home this weekend, my intention was at least to pick up Solarquest, since I was terribly curious how much of it was salvageable. My dad had started moving games to the garage, so I saw another game that I chose to clean up as well called Midnight Party. Solarquest is a similar game to Monopoly but set in space (and with other differences), while Midnight Party is a Wolfgang Kramer game, a game designer best known later on for other games like El Grande, Torres and Tikal.

Hopefully I'll be writing about at least one of these games in the coming weeks. I do know both of these games have much more involved game boards though, and I would prefer to see if there are good ways to construct comparable game boards. So we'll see how much difficulty there will be in reviving these games.

Rolling for Initiative (or Blogging with Inspiration)

Introduction

So I went home recently looking for an older game I was talking about at work. It was called "APBA Baseball" and although originally published in 1951, the version we had was probably from the 1970s or 1980s. To briefly summarize the game, there was a base game you bought, and then every year they released a set of all players as an annual expansion to the game. Sort of like Madden football video games, but as a board game. With you and your opponent each choosing a team set, you could play each other using the players from that team in that year, with dice incorporating a randomization factor. I don't recall playing it a whole lot, but it was an interesting concept. When fantasy football started becoming a mainstream internet attraction, this was the first thing I remembered.

Here's an amazing video about it from the New York Times five years ago:


Interestingly, this board game is still a thing, even after 70 years, and it covers most major sports including Football, Soccer, Hockey, Basketball and Golf. So if this sounds of interest to you it can be purchased initially for about $25 at apba.stores.yahoo.net. But the game isn't really the focus of my story this time around.

Finding the Game

My family had a lot of board games growing up; several of which I loved as a child. We had fun kid's games like Cat's Eye, some dexterity games like Torpedo Run!, and a lot of oddball games. One that sticks in my mind is Solarquest, which was essentially Monopoly in space. It was a more enjoyable game, particularly because it - unlike Monopoly - ended much more quickly. I'm hoping to write about at least some of these games in the future.

When I was living at home over a decade ago, the games were all in the house's family room, and not very well organized. A few years later, most of those games migrated downstairs into the basement (though with some exceptions - games that my brother and I felt specific ownership toward like Hero's Quest or Torpedo Run! stayed out of the basement).

I collected Torpedo Run! from home today. [Instagram]

A while back my dad's basement flooded, and there was a lot of water damage that migrated into the basement. This led to the destruction of a lot of things downstairs, but some of it was noticed more than others (and you can probably tell where this is going). Today my search for this game led us downstairs, and we found out the game in terrible shape. It wasn't going to be salvageable because previous damage, time and neglect tore the game to shreds, and was immediately trashed.

It was really bad. When you can buy the game
today for $25, you may as well trash a box like this.

Pipeline

It's said you can find inspiration in everything, and there in the basement I saw another game called Pipeline (1988) that looked in slightly better shape. On a whim as my dad was bringing APBA Baseball upstairs, I grabbed Pipeline and took it along with me.

Another basement victim, but more salvageable.

I didn't have much hope for APBA Baseball, because I remembered it being almost entirely paper components, but I wanted to see a better example. Pipeline turned out to be a great decision to grab - all the pieces except the board were made of plastic, and the board itself should be relatively easy to reconstruct. I washed the pieces off two clear off dust and whatnot that may have remained after several years out of sight.

"After 20+ years you will find, looking this good you are not."

Pipeline: A game without a board right now.

I plan to reconstruct Pipeline in the next month or two, though I may take a few liberties with the game board. The objective of the game is for each player to build out a pipe from the center of a custom board out to one of their oil tankers at the edge of the game board. Considering that's the only special thing about the board, it may be easier to create obstacle pieces and use a plain game board, so I can use the board for more things in the future.

Inspiration

What remains of the APBA Baseball game - the rest was
all trashed. [Instagram]

In the weeks ahead I will probably attempt to clear out the board games that are in the basement and see what games or parts I can salvage. There were several games of my childhood that I enjoyed down there, and it saddens me to know that some of those may never be played again in their current state. So my hope for the moment is to see what can be saved, and otherwise document as much imagery as I can, extract the pieces that may have a second life one day (either in rebuilding the game or making them backup components), and trash the rest.