Hextraction Shrink Ray Tile

This profoundly stupid tile small-ifies your balls with imaginary mad science. Wreak tiny havoc across Hextraction, the hackable, 3D-printable board game. Since it requires out-of-game items, I've made this a Forbidden premium tile for experienced players only.

Marvin the Martian. Ant-Man. Duke Nukem. What do these legendary properties have in common? Great one-liners. What else? They squash dudes flat. You know how? Shrink rays. Grab the blaster, pull the trigger, and watch the target collapse to snack size. If you're Mr. Nukem and you happen to be looking in the mirror at the time, you instead watch the rest of the world get really, really big for some reason. No one, literally no one, asked me to bring that magic to Hextraction. No one asked until I asked... myself. Then I answered myself. With this ridiculous tile.

When a ball enters the Shrink Ray Tile, the onboard ray gun bathes it with iota particles, a very small form of radiation I just invented. This atomizes the ball (by making you pluck it out) and reassembles it (by making you plop a 5mm bearing on the tile) and now you have a half-sized ball jangling around the tracks.

You'll need some 5mm bearing balls to drop in there - it's a few extra bucks, but how could you put a price on joy? I originally intended to store the balls inside the tile, so it could work without the Forbidden keyword, but I just couldn't figure out how. Feel free to mod this and edit the card!

Due to geometry I slept through in 10th grade, a sphere with half the diameter has way less than half the mass, so while the mini-ball will travel through regular tracks just fine, it won't have any effect on mechanisms. This actually introduces some interesting strategy, especially on tiles like the Flip-Flop that still work without being actuated. I made this tile fit multiple orientations for flexibility, but the ray gun prevents the two inputs from connecting. Still, this plays very nicely with the Launcher Tile, and can act like a time-delay trap tile with the effect disabled.

The Shrink Ray Tile doesn't need any special printing prep, but it does look particularly good with high Z resolution. If you have a multi-material printer, this is also a great time to go wild with the color painting tool.

Fun fact: This was one of the first tiles I designed for Hextraction! While developing the game, I bought a variety pack of bearing balls, and challenged myself to use multiple sizes on a single tile. Its original sketch became the Clone Tile, but I liked the idea so much I started again from scratch.

This tile's Forbidden effect is incompatible with the game rules, but can be enabled voluntarily. As the first copy of a Forbidden tile is played each game, call a vote. If any player votes nay, the tile's Forbidden effects are disabled. If all players vote yea, the Forbidden effects are enabled and take priority over game rules.

If you'd like to edit the tile, the source is here: https://a360.co/45aXuN7 While you're free to re-distribute the tile outside Thangs' paywall, I'd like to ask that you at least modify it a bit. The fewer people buy Booster Packs, the less time I can devote to making more.

Since Forbidden tiles are too problematic for most players, I've decided to reserve mine as premium models for the most dedicated players. Play them responsibly, and thank you for supporting Hextraction!