How-to
Well i did my Pai-Sho Board making a square of 50 centimeters each side and the pieces of 2 centimeters of diameter. I made my own design of the pieces but having in mind that each design have to be perfect with symmetry. I made the game for two players: One with the flowers with white back and others with black back. All my pieces and the board are made of wood. (The picture is from other's game).
Pictures
A Pai Sho board in the making. It's made of plywood, and painted with acrylic paint. Oh and feel free to use the picture if you like :).
Here are some Pai Sho pieces made by Thomas:
They are laser-engraved plywood, hand-colored with Sharpie markers, which bled just a little. They're 1.5 inches in diameter, which would require at least a 27-inch board to play on. These may be all the designs that we actually see in episodes of Avatar, but Thomas may have missed a few.
User - Jeremy:
I have made a set of Pai-Sho Tiles using the actual flower designs as opposed to canon tiles, but the gameplay will essentially be the same. I made these using 1 1/2-inch wooden nickels and sharpie markers. I made up the designs in Photoshop and transferred the designs onto the tiles using tracing paper and then filled in the areas with the markers.
There are 13 total tiles in the set. Shown from left to right, from top to bottom:
Boat, White Jade, Wheel, White Dragon, Reversal(my original tile), Rock, White Lily, White Jasmine, Knotweed, Red Rose, Red Rhododendron, White Lotus, and Red Crystanthemum.
Print and Glue Board and Tiles
I created a full scale drawing and exported it to a PDF file which I brought to FedEx Kinkos.
They printed it in large format paper which I mounted on foam board and cut down to 24x24
For the tiles I had a wooden dowel cross cut on a table saw, I'm sanding and staining them now.
Stain Options
For the images I exported as a PDF and printed them at home
I added a guide for cutting shown here as the 1 inch circle.
I bought a 1 inch hole punch to use for cutting the paper.
Which I then glued to the wooden tile.
I'm making hundreds of these for different variants so I'm not finished yet. But I thought the process would be helpful to see.
How To
My Pai Sho board cost me just under $20 in raw materials, but I already had some stain required and I found the wood lying on the side of the road (how fortuitous, I know). I used a woodburning kit to do the grooves and grid.
The tiles were made by cutting and sanding a dowel and then woodburning and staining the pieces. Some turned out better than others, but all are definitely doable
The Result
The board isn't quite canonical because of the 2 white "ports" but that's because I like symmetry and because I make use of that in my variant: Ancient Pai Sho.
Comments (18)
Anonymous said
at 6:02 pm on Jun 27, 2007
That's cool, what's it made of?
Anonymous said
at 6:05 pm on Jun 27, 2007
I uploaded the pic and put the actually image up. I hope you don't mind. If you don't want it that way, I can put it to the way it was.
Anonymous said
at 6:40 am on Jul 7, 2007
Go ahead and use the picture as you like. We made it so that other Avatar fans could be inspired to make a Paisho board like us :).
Yi Chen said
at 4:49 pm on Feb 6, 2010
What names do you give the other tiles? As the white lotus tile is the only one name in the show.
Caroline said
at 8:18 pm on Mar 6, 2010
In the show, all the Pai Sho boards are much larger than, for instance, if each square was 1 sq. inch, 18 inches. In Avatar, the boards are closer to 2ce that size, though I understand we might've trimmed them down for travel. Would it be better to make a large one, or a smaller one, in anyones opinion?
Dudewaldo4 said
at 5:17 am on Apr 17, 2010
I agree with that, they appear to be bigger in the series
Richard said
at 2:23 pm on Jun 21, 2010
Well, they might be like chess boards. Some are big, some are small, maybe one commonly used size, and a large one for 3 or more players.
jiego said
at 12:41 am on Jul 9, 2010
Can you make a complete set of the Pai Sho tiles of the wiki version and post a list of the pictures online (like how the ones in the kutai version looks like but only the one's on the wiki version not the ones in the kutai version in the and put it online in the printing page of this site) because i would like an authentic look on the tiles.
Jeremy said
at 8:42 pm on Aug 8, 2010
Hey guys. I actually created a Beginner's Pai Sho board, complete with the 24 tiles per player for a 2-player game. It's very basic, and I used the actual flower for the design(when I could find it) and did it with wooden nickels and sharpies. The board is made of paper, but could be taped or glued to a hard surface as needed. If anyone wants to see the designs, I'll be glad to put them up here!
Brandon said
at 11:40 pm on Aug 8, 2010
Of course we want to see it, stick the pictures up there!
Jeremy said
at 8:50 am on Aug 9, 2010
The board is exactly just like the original design, I just made it smaller for the Beginner's Pai Sho. I have yet to strategize the rules for the game, but I will be working on that when I can. I will try to stay close to the original as possible, but I'll use my working knowledge of board and card games to make it playable. The tiles are very different but that's because they are based on actual flower designs as opposed to the canon tiles. Anyway, I'll be sure to make a new variation page if and when I manage to develop the gameplay.
Brandon said
at 9:34 pm on Aug 9, 2010
Looks nice so far! I'm assuming you got the wooden nickels from a craft store, or something, right?
Jeremy said
at 11:40 pm on Aug 9, 2010
Yeah, that's right. I got my wooden nickels from craft stores like Hobby Lobby, Michael's, etc. They go about $3 for a bag of 20 or so each.
Frank said
at 10:10 am on Sep 8, 2011
the laser engraved tiles look great! where did you get the engraver? i was thinking of metal casting brandings to just heat and stamp the tiles.
Azaya said
at 5:56 pm on Jan 6, 2012
Is there any way to contact Thomas, or does anybody know if he would be willing to make a white lotus tile as a commission? I absolutely love his work with the tiles!
Osuji said
at 7:26 pm on Jan 7, 2012
I looked at the page history (this page only) and was nat able to determine who added the picture fo thomas's tiles. It looks like it may have been anonymous or perhaps richard? Now way to tell really. I'd suggest searching all the pages on the site for any posts or comments by a Thomas. Then if he listed an Email address you could try that. Unless someone else knows how to get in touch with him
Frank George said
at 10:32 am on May 1, 2012
I was wondering were you could get the tiles lazer engraved
Red Kutai said
at 1:36 pm on May 2, 2012
That would be very dependent upon where you live, but I believe that some common companies - trophy shops, as an example - use laser engravers. I'm not sure what you'd need in order for them to laser-engrave your tiles; they may expect you to bring vector-based images, or they may be able to create those vectors from whatever source images you supply. I suspect you'd have to actually inquire, to know for sure...
You don't have permission to comment on this page.