No talking this time! The sounds and visuals were nice enough, so I'm letting those do the explaining here. You will hear more of my soothing Batman/Casteil/Max Payne voice next time, I promise! Until then, I'll be happy to answer any questions in the comments section.

A note on coconuts: there is some variation to their color, depending on where they came from. Aside from that, as a general rule, the more you sand them, the more brown-colored they will become. The inside is like a super fine grained hard-wood (two words), so it sands and finishes beautifully. Be warned- sanding it all the way through to the brown 'heartwood' removes all of its striking features and depth, resulting in a dark brown, solid color. The two featured at the end are examples of my recommended compromise. They were sanded to 220, then given three coats of oil; one heavy, two light.

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The board game, Go, is perhaps the oldest, greatest, and most complex game of its type ever to be conceived by human beings. Its range of possible game-play configurations is nearly limitless, at least with respect to the human capacity. The Game can be played on any square grid, but typically the boards are (9, 13, or 19)². It is worth noting that these numbers represent the number of intersections, and not the number of squares on the board. This is because the game is played on the points- unlike Checkers, Othello, or Chess, which are all played using the insides of the squares. The number of points in a row on a square grid is (n+1), where n= the # of squares in the row. In other words, a 19x19 board really has 19x19 active points, but there's only 18x18 squares on it.

If you want to play the game on the cheap, just print out a grid of 12 squares by 12 squares (which is known as a 13x13 board). Or play it in the shop on your green cutting mat, like the one I made these on. You can buy bags of colored glass gobs at the craft or dollar store, so you don't need expensive Go stones.

So, what is the point of the game, anyhow? Well, it's a territorial competition, where the object is to capture the most space by surrounding as many of the opponent's pieces as possible. It's a zero-sum game, which means that somebody loses if somebody wins. If you like games such as this, or game theory in general (and presumably you do, as you are still reading), then you will be delighted to know that I have two of my own zero-sum board games in the works, and I look forward to releasing them to video. Neither is quite as complex as Go, but one of them has an enormous game potential, and I'm excited to show it to you. We are still testing for ad infinitum, deadlock, and player advantage; I want to be sure the rules cover as much as possible before I release it. With respect to fun, tactility, aesthetics, and originality, I'm super proud of it! So if you like games, look forward to it. Please let me know it if you read this- I really appreciate that, because I don't like the feeling that I'm talking to an empty room. Seriously, thanks for reading ;)

Here's a great video about how to learn Go in 15 minutes:
   • learn go in 15 mins  

The game's wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

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Music:
Desert City Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...