Wandering Monster: printed prototype

I have printed and sliced all the parts for a fresh, new set. We've been playtesting with some rather rough tiles and cards for a while. The best examples were taped together and had handwritten modifications.

That's pretty rough

 Now it will all be clean and crisp. Certainly it's not final art yet, in case you're thinking these too are a bit bare bones. But before any virtual paint hits any digital canvas, we're going to make sure we have the right number and kinds of pieces for a highly replayable and entertaining game of Wandering Monster. Even this prototype is looking better than ever though.

I finished the slicing and dicing at home on my old swing-arm paper cutter. But I had a few minutes at the Kinkos near home and got to try out their Rotatrim. I've been meaning to try one of these, not the generic brands, but the real deal. It is nearly the perfect tool for these stiff paper mockups. You can line things up quickly and slice even more rapidly. Even when there is a hairline edge of white paper on the edge of your art, you just nudge it out a bit and cut again. The blade disk has no trouble at all whisking away the thinnest extra material. It even works when you are trimming an irregular piece starting from nothing.

The official spinning blade of Wandering Monster

The only thing it didn't do well was separating two small cards from each other. For example, if you want to cut a 40cm strip into two 20cm strips, it will be hard to position it under the plastic guide. Can any of you worthy readers find me one with a narrower guide that solves that problem?