Verge Materials

From Verge

Verge requires some special materials to play. This chapter explains what you need and how you can acquire them (or reasonable substitutes).

Paper

You'll be drawing a giant web of ideas, the network, on a shared piece of paper. That piece of paper should be as large as possible. Office supply stores sell pads of easel-sized paper. Most large grocery stores and general-purpose retailers sell poster board. You'll want white, or at least some very light color like yellow, so you can read what you write on it.

If large paper is not available to you, tape together four or six or nine regular sheets of blank paper (put the tape on the back so you don't have to look at it and write on it).

Pens

You will need to distinguish who wrote what. It's best if each player has a pen of a different color. Sharpies work great. Avoid similar color pairs (test on a separate piece of paper, if necessary): blue and black, orange and red, green and blue. These and other pairs of colors can look a lot alike on paper. You'll have to experiment to find distinguishable colors for everyone.

If you don't have colored pens or markers, regular pens or pencils will do. You'll have to initial everything you write down, though, and that is a pain in the ass.

Write a quick "key" in one corner of the paper: have everyone write her name in their color of choice, neatly along the outside edge of the paper near their seat.

Dice

Verge uses a lot of six-sided dice. Players can share dice. 20-30 dice should be sufficient for play. They don't have to match or anything like that, but see the note in Markers, below.

You can purchase attractive six-siders in "bricks" of 36 12mm dice for about $7 online and in fine hobby stores. I've seen bricks of 100 plain white, pipped six-siders on eBay for $8 (in 2009). The smaller 12mm dice are better than the larger 16mm dice because you get more of them for the money and they cover up less stuff on the network if you use them as markers.

Tokens

You'll need some kind of tokens. Color doesn't matter. Life is better if they stack. Really, poker chips are best because they stack and are easily countable. "Dollar" stores often sell small boxes of poker chips for... well, a buck. Sometimes they "bleed" their cheap ink on your hands though. Caveat emptor. That's Latin for, "Don't be a chump."

If you don't have poker chips, you can get by with cards, glass beads, or even pennies. Glass beads don't stack well but I guess they're pretty. Playing cards stack well but are hard to count at a glance. Pennies are hard to pick up and move around. See the Markers section, below, for ways to use your tokens as markers.

Markers

Each player needs a dozen or so small markers. Each player's markers should be distinguishable from every other player's markers. Glass beads work well enough.

Really, though, your dice can serve double-duty as markers if every player has a different color set of dice. If you have a different set of color poker chips, then your chips can server as markers.

Play Space

You'll need a suitably large table to fit your big-ass piece of paper.

Snacks

Verge is best played while enjoying the following:

• individually wrapped confectionary snacks (e.g., Twinkies, Ding-Dongs)
• microwaveable meat products (e.g., burritos, frozen pizzas)
• carbonated beverages with enhanced caffeine and sugar content (e.g., Jolt Cola, Red Bull, or the two mixed)
• inexpensive alcoholic beverages (e.g., Budweiser, bottom-shelf vodka)