Bringing Gaming Humor Back
Especially in a tournament environment, people can get pretty tense pretty fast, with gaming reputations, money, and prizes on the line. But everyone laughs at a funny set of tokens or counters, crazy sleeves, silly dice, or outlandishly-decorated card boxes; it's all part of a little lighthearted humor.
The following ideas may seem kind of stupid, but they just might fire your imagination to try a little humor at your next tournament or casual gaming session. Showing that you can take the game lightly and have fun is important--and it helps everyone else be a little more lighthearted as well.
Sleeves
You can start the laughs by sleeving your tournament deck in loud-colored holographic or patterned sleeves, or sleeves with funny pictures. Click here to view a list of sites where you can buy card sleeves.
Deck Boxes
Plain and cheap plastic deck boxes can work well as a canvas for anything silly you can imagine--you can add designs using craft paint, glue on googly eyes, fuzz balls, and plastic jewels, or even wrap colorful or patterned fabric around them. Visit my Crafty Deck Boxes article to see some tips on decorating your deck box with glue-on objects and/or paint.
If the super-crafty approach doesn't work for you, you can also photocopy a few of your favorite card images and stick them on the box as well, using tape or even rubber cement. For both the fabric and paper projects, don't use metal boxes--adhesive won't adhere nearly as well to the painted metal surface as it will to a plastic box. Plus, the plastic boxes are way cheaper anyway. Click here to see a full list of sites which sell deck boxes.
Tokens
If your deck uses creature tokens, you can also design your own silly tokens out of card stock and markers. If you don't draw, you can print off a free picture from the internet, or create something in Paint or Photoshop and print that off. (Glue sticks work much better than liquid glue for this kind of paper project.)
You can either sleeve your handmade tokens differently from your main deck if you wish (in a similarly bright color or pattern), or leave them unsleeved. Just wait for someone to notice--and likely, start giggling. :) Also, storing your tokens in clear boxes like these adds extra impact!
Dice
The fun can also continue with dice. You might choose to use the tiniest dice ever for counters (these are often called "pirate dice"), or you might just want to plop a set of big fuzzy dice on the table for laughs! Check out my dice links to see where to buy funny dice!
Of course, I would not recommend using pirate or fuzzy dice for serious rolls in Clix tournaments, just in case the judge might disqualify you, but they're fun to have on display. Regular-sized sparkly or loud-colored dice not only look cool, but can give your rolls a little more pizzazz--just make sure you can still read how many pips are on the side that came up! You can also get 20-sided dice in these kinds of shades as well, so don't just limit the flashy-colored dice to Clix!
Counters
Lastly, for a Clix or SWMinis tournament, you can use funny counters for Force Points, feat card counters or action tokens/activation counters--for instance, I've seen people use tokens from board games (funny to see the Monopoly shoe or car being used to mark Luke Skywalker or Batman!).