Fussy cutting

When I was cutting out Raiders in My Pocket, Carrie told me that I was fussy cutting. Which was a term I had never heard before but I understood what it meant immediately. Well, it didn’t hurt that I was doing it at the time.

Since then, I now break down on my projects into fussy-cut and non-fussy-cut.

One of the most useful tools I’ve found for print-and-play has been the paper cutter. In fact, we’re on our second one and I’m not sure how many times we’ve put a new blade on the one we have now. If a project needs straight cuts, like a sheet of cards for instance, a paper cutter makes it a _lot_ easier.

But if I have a whole bunch of little pieces on one laminating sheets, I’m not able to make this big straight cuts. That’s when I have to get out of the scissors and make a lot of the little cuts, fussy cutting. If you can line up twenty or more tiles or chits in a laminating pouch perfectly and feed it through a laminator without jarring them, you are doing so much better than me.

Earlier this year, I made the demo copy of Tiny Epic Zombies, which was the largest project I’ve made this year and one of my largest projects period. (But I am getting more ambitious) But it’s mostly big tiles and cards. The one page of Raiders in My Pocket took me longer to cut :D

Which isn’t to say that I am going to avoid fussy cut projects. While I have said and continue to support the idea that you can have a healthy PnP hobby with no or minimal construction projects (Welcome to Dino World, Wurfel Bingo, Knizia’s Decathlon, and Utopia Engine, to name a few examples), I have been getting more and more into construction. Mostly because it’s fun, really.

If a project requires fussy cutting, that just means I have to budget more time for the construction.