Building the Boardgame

Printing the files

Printing the files contained in the Pokémon Life game folder is fairly straightforward. Every file should be printed at 100% of the size (don't fit it to a page). How many times you have to print each file is included in the filename.

The Victory and Event piles should be printed two-sided (Event/Victory Background is to be used on the backside of all cards). If you don't have the resources to print everything, you can use the Pile tool during your games. This tool simulates the piles, allowing you to play the game without printing the piles.

When printing the board, you should keep it at 100% of the size as well. The Johto (Landscpae) and Kanto Compact (Portrait) boards should be fitted on 2x2 pages, while the regular Kanto board should be fitted on 3x2 pages. You can do this by making the borders of pages smaller.

Printing from Paint works perfectly to ensure that everything is printed properly, though every program should work.

Laminating and cutting

After printing everything, you have to put every page in a lamination pouch. You will need around 140 lamination pouches if you want to laminate everything. When laminating, make sure that the pages don't curl, as that will make the cards quite ugly.

If you didn't laminate pages at a too low temperature, you can easily cut the pages on the grey dividing lines using a paper cutter, after which you will have beautiful Pokémon Life cards. I suggest you don't use a scissors to cut the pages, as that would take very long and will not result in straight cards.

When cutting the board you will have to be careful. You have to cut off all white edges, after which you can tape the parts of the board together (and it will be foldable too). To make the board more sturdy, you may want to paste it on top of a wooden board or something similar. If you are not confident in your cutting abilities, you can also order a poster of the board, which is of course the best looking.

Sorting and storing the cards.

Arguably the most difficult part of assembling Pokémon Life is a finding a suitable box. The easiest solution is to use Knackebrod boxes such as the linked one. You will need two boxes to store all your cards. You will slightly more than one full box for all Pokémon cards, so I suggest you pick some cards that are not used often to leave out of the box. A box like this one is very suitable to quickly find the Pokémon cards you need. In the other box you will have room for the Items, Event pile and Victory pile.

In order to have fun playing the game you will have to sort the Pokémon cards alphabetically, allowing you to quickly find the Pokémon you need during the game.

Pawns and other items.

I suggest you to use the following items when playing the game, but most items are fully optional:

• Any dice will do (you will need at least 2)
• Game counters to keep track of charges. Any kind of counters will do.
• A Pokémon Yahtzee dice. This dice is totally optional, but using this dice to decide your Starter Pokémon adds to the fun. It can be found here
• Pokémon Monopoly pawns. These pawns are amazing, they fit on the board perfectly and they represent all Kanto Starter Pokémon. You can find Pokémon Monopoly on sites like ebay. In the Netherlands it won't cost you more than 10 euros.