Board games have proven to be a fun and effective way of retaining knowledge. The cool thing is that anyone can make whatever board game they want. What you need...... 1. A collection of different sided dice, we have 4, 6, 8, 9, 20 and even a 100 sided dice (almost a round ball with 100 facets around it). 2. A lttle bit of creativity and some graphics and you can make any board game you want in a word processer. 3. Sets of question cards. Get some Avery 8371 business cards and use a word processer to type in question sets of various categoies. You can make whatever categories you need, wildfire, extrication, Engineer, Search & rescue, EMS and even sets based on your departments policies and procedures. Saving the question sets in the business card label allows you to go back, update changes and reprint the entire question set without much trouble.

Engineer
This board goes along with the theme of Engineer question sets. The beginning of the game takes you around the apparatus like you were doing a circle for safety. You cross the railroad tracks after you have stopped and then flow through the pump casing in the pressure mode. Questions like, friction loss, driving physics and apparatus placement

WILDFIRE GRID GAME
This game can range from simple fire growth to a wealth of scenarios involving, wind speed, direction, bomber drops etc. The board to the right can be used several ways. You can use 2 people, 1 on a team and ask the other the question or have as many on a team as you want and the team decides the answers together. The two teams can decide to encircle the fire with "Fireline" and meet at the the other side, you either beat the fire reaching the perimeter or count how many spaces each team can "dig".

Simple fire growth - After each team gets a chance at a question, the fire grows 1 square in all directions (even diagonally). When the crew answers a question correctly, they roll the dice and move, if the answer is wrong they don't move. Play until the fire has a "Control line" all the way around it or the fire reaches the perimeter.
Adding wind factor - This is where the 8 sided dice comes in handy. By layout of the grid you can easily see the Cardinal points, (North, East, South, West) and by using the squares diagonally, you have Northeast, SouthWest and so on. Roll a 1 and wind blows North, a 2 and wind blows Northeast and on around the compass. To calculate wind speed, a six sided dice will do. Roll a 1-2, wind speed makes fire move 2 squares in the direction of the wind direction while all other sides still grow 1 square. Use whatever numbers you want.
Adding bomber drops - Either decide if each team will get 1, 2, 3 air drops or roll the dice to decide number of drops. Use the 6 sided dice to decide the length of each drop, write them down to the side and crews use them as needed. The drop can only in a continous line, L to R, R to L or diagonal.
We have even printed out these grid style sheets onto overhead material and projected them onto a dry erase board for larger number of people to play. Questions sets have the 18 watchout situations, 10 orders, wildfire behavior, weather, Class A foam and Urban-Interface.

Versatility & Streets game
This game encourages versatility required of our type service, shows that in teams, everyone doesn't have to know everything but between the team, they must rely on each other's specialty knowledge in an area. This type board was converted from our department made street directory, it helps members learn roads and routes by having to take actual roads to get where they need to go. With the MicroMachine Firefighter pieces, they start at the fire station, roll the dice and move by the streets to each number square where they must answer a question from that category before recording the number, then they move on to the next number till all have been achieved and they return to quarters. The board is printed on an 11x17" piece of paper and laminated.

BOARD GAMES