Nandeck is a great tool to make cards and things like tiles or tokens. You can generate PDFs based on a spreadsheet so that after you playtest, you can simply update your spreadsheet and regenerate your PDF.
You can learn more about Nandeck here: http://www.nand.it/nandeck/
If you’ve never used Nandeck, I highly suggest you read a few tutorials before going through this one.
Polyonimos or Tetrominos are shapes that are like those in Tetris. They’re in games like Patchwork, Indian Summer, and Number 9.
Download Files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/70upck0mgjb6b6s/Polyominos.zip?dl=0
Open up the .txt file in Nandeck and the excel file. When looking at the .txt file, you’ll notice it’s super short! It’s mainly just saying how big each ‘card’ is and where each icon is.
Icons are essentially images that you can use by referring to their letter. For example, if I were to have something that said, ‘ppp’ it would have three of the images that are located at Images\purple.png.
You’ll need an image for each base square of your polyominos. I use one for each different color, but you can add textures and other things to mix and match on the same ‘card’, if you wish. You’ll also need an image that’s the same size as all your other images that’s just white. This will be used as to fill in the space where you don’t want the polyomino to do.
Now, looking at the excel file, you’ll see the following:
We’re creating a three by three grid. 11 refers to the first row and column, 12 is the first row and second column, etc. Nandeck is using the all column, which essentially brings together all the other columns and puts a ‘w’ in for each empty column.
The first ‘card’ has an o in spaces 11, 12, 22, and 23, which presents itself as the card below:
If you’d like to make the polyominos larger, simply change the cardsize line.
If you’d like to add text or images, just add another column to the spreadsheet and add the image or text via the Visual Editor.
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