Here’s a quick confession for you folks when it comes to building cards.

I prep them like I’m in the Medieval Age. :P

Now, if you’ve been reading my newsletters for a while, you may have noticed that I focus a lot on how the games play out, or the stories behind them. So you hear more about the behind-the-scenes, Visual Playthroughs, the anatomy of games, etc. Being a game designer, that comes to me naturally.

But you’ve probably also noticed that I barely go in-depth on how I actually build the games. It’s not that I’m not a crafter. Far from it, actually.

About 12 years ago, back when I was a student, I used to make printed bookmarks and sell them at stalls, events, online, and pretty much wherever I could. I must have made and sold thousands of them.

The process was very hands-on. I printed the bookmarks on cardstock, gave them a half-cut to create the fold, glued the sides together, pressed them under a heavy book, and then added a neat finishing touch so they looked almost machine-pressed.

And I used no paper cutter machine. It was all done with a cutter, a ruler, and a self-healing mat.

So printing on cardstock and pasting things together is something I had been doing way before I discovered print-and-plays, or even started designing games. I take a weird amount of pride in being able to cut 5mm PVC board with a cutter, with what I’d like to believe is machine-level precision. That helped me a lot when I started building board game prototypes.

When I discovered print-and-plays in 2023, I was glad that those old skills would finally come to good use again. But not everything clicked with me right away, especially when it came to the different stuff or techniques folks use to build components.

Building cards, for instance. Probably the most common component in a PnP setup.

I build cards the same way I used to craft bookmarks, and I’m super comfortable with it. And because of my previous experience with traditionally prepping bookmarks, not every method or component got to win over my biased heart.

Take card sleeves, for example.

I cannot stand the glare of lamination or card sleeves. It weirdly overwhelms me. I’ve heard of matte card sleeves, and maybe that could change my mind one day, but I’m yet to try them out.

Then there’s the ordeal with card alignment.

I hear a lot of complaints about this when people print cards. Quite coincidentally, just when I was drafting this issue in the morning, Ravi (@littleboardgamer) reached out to me on Instagram to discuss the same thing. While printing cards, how do you deal with alignment issues?

My response was very old-school. I don’t print both sides on the same page.

I print the fronts and backs on separate sheets, trace them with a lamp to make sure the alignment is on point, and then glue them together. After that, of course, I cut them out!

It’s unorthodox, sure. But this technique works 99% of the time. At least for me.

Of course, there are cleaner and more modern solutions out there. I know that. But I have to admit that my years of making thousands of bookmarks with this exact technique have made me very biased towards it.

I recently built 7 To Midnight this way, and that game has 100+ cards. It took me around 4 hours to prep the whole thing. Cutting, aligning, gluing, pressing, trimming. Loved it!

But there was one thing that bugged me about my process. The corners.

Since I was cutting everything by hand, the cards had sharp corners. That made them more prone to damage, and they also looked less polished than I wanted.

I wanted that rounded card feel, but using scissors or a cutter to “try” rounding the corners felt criminal.

I came across Kadomaru Pro, a corner cutter on Amazon with stunning ratings, but it might take a while to arrive. Then I found some locally sourced corner cutters, the kind commonly used for cards. That felt reassuring...

So I took a little leap of faith, pushed my bias aside, and bought one.

Now, was it worth it?

OH YES!

I tried it out on my recently printed Roll 4 More Rum, and found the process almost therapeutic. The edges look pristine, as they should!

So yes... this is my confession!

My approach to building PnPs is a bit (A LOT) unorthodox.

I rely a lot on the old-school techniques I picked up years before I ever knew print-and-plays existed. But I also love that part of it.

So tell me, what are the tools you commonly use to build your PnPs? Enlighten me.

Maybe that’ll help me explore more of my builder side!

- Tas.

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