Pimp My Game - Escape: The Curse of the Temple

I'm back!  At least for now.  While I was on break, I was sent some pretty cool meeples, and so I figured that I would share them with you on my first "pimp my game" post.  Basically, what this (potential) series will be are ways to take your favorite games and make them look just a touch cooler.

Custom meeples versus original adventurers

Now, in the last couple of years, one of my absolute favorite games has been Escape: The Curse of the Temple.  And, honestly, the game looks pretty good on it's own, and doesn't really need to be improved.  BUT - who cares?  I wanted to pimp my copy out anyway.  And, really the only way that I could think of for pimping it out would be to replace the matching adventurer meeples for varied, custom painted meeples.  This can actually improve the game in a couple of ways, as well - it can help if someone that you play with is color blind and cannot tell some of the adventurers apart, and it can also help if some of your players regularly use the same color, and so they are inadvertently moving another person's piece.  Whereas these aren't really major issues in most games, since Escape is a real time game, you need to be able to play as quickly as possible.  So the custom painted meeples are also useful!

Meeples laying down - useful if you stand while playing

So, here is how I pimped out my copy, for in case you wanted to pimp out your own - I got a set of 25 character meeples from Meeple Source, and I threw them in the Escape box.  That's it!!  Now it's a lot more fun to pick your character at the beginning of the game, and also your character is more recognizable as you play!

Are there any down-sides or points of confusion from changing out these pieces?  There's no additional confusion, since each player should be able to remember who they chose (though there will no longer be a marker in front of them).  However, the character meeples are a bit smaller than the original adventurer meeples, and they also may look similar if you are standing them up (since the tops of them aren't different).  Simple enough solution - I lay them flat, and the problem is solved!  And, if you're worried about the size difference, you can order mega meeples - though I believe that their selection of those is more limited.

Here are many of the options I can pick from

And, just so you know, right now Meeple Source is running a Kickstarter campaign for their character meeples.  If you're interested in pimping out your copy of Escape (or just like cool looking meeples), I'd recommend you check them out.  In addition to the 25 meeples that I received, their campaign is allowing them to start creating a lot of new ones (I believe it's over 50 new options thus far).  Plus, I'm not certain, but I think that the campaign might be a touch cheaper than their normal prices.

I would like to thank Meeple Source for providing me with a review copy of their 25-pack of Character Meeples.