Pai Sho is a formerly-fictional board game seen in Avatar: The Last Airbender - all that’s shown in the series is the board and a few of the game pieces - no rules are given. Over the years, fans of the show have worked to build real rules to make a real game that felt true to the show. The most popular versions of those fan-made rules needed a lot of work, so I rebuilt it into a game that’s fun, strategic, and playable (and I called this ruleset Skud Pai Sho).
Then I made The Garden Gate - a place to play Skud Pai Sho (and a couple other completely different fan-made takes on the game) online with others. If you click that link, you’ll see what the board and tiles look like there.
Well, here’s what they look like now that I have some cherry, walnut, and maple plywood at my laser’s command
The tiles pictured there are maple plywood. Printing a full set of hardwood tiles is coming up soon. I’ve been giddy lately because of the beautiful engraves I’ve been getting. Here’s an example in maple hardwood:
I’m so torn by all the gorgeous board games I see on the forums. On the one hand, holy moly you guys are making some great stuff. On the other hand, if I make a game, then I gotta play it, which means less laser time.
Haha indeed! And I completely forgot about it when I said the thing about seeing the board by going to my website instead. Didn’t have to look that far after all
If you ever have any questions about anything Pai Sho, let me know. I’m practically the physical embodiment of all that is Pai Sho by now, having started work on all this Pai Sho work over two years ago.
Until then, if you’re interested you should join me in some games to try out the different variations at The Garden Gate, and also try out Paiko which is inspired by Pai Sho.
I’m already up and running selling these tiles, so if you really can’t wait…
Thanks for sharing!
