PNP Friday for July 31, 2026 - What I Love About Master of Coin
JG looks at the the latest crowdfunding campaign from Postmark Games.
Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s July 31st and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.
Table of Contents
Main Feature: What I Love About Master of Coin
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Playthrough of Signal & Noise
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?
What I Love About Master of Coin
JASON GREENO // JULY 31, 2026
When it comes to the world of print and play gaming there are movers and there are shakers. I think of movers as the designers and publishers who produce lots of games in a short period of time. Shakers on the other hand are the creators who push the industry in a unique direction, constantly innovating the format. It’s easy to drop Postmark Games into the latter category—their games like Voyages and 52 Realms have brought us fun new mechanics and concepts. That’s not to say that the team isn’t prolific: Their latest game, Master of Coin is the 8th release in a little over 3 years!
The game immediately caught my attention in a weird way—asking the customer to flip coins for random results is not a new concept. As a game designer myself, I’ve dabbled with coins as a component, but often felt stumped by its limits. I immediately had to investigate to see what veteran designers Matthew Dunstan and Rory Muldoon had cooked up!
And I was not disappointed. Master of Coin is a masterclass in decision density and component economy, packing an astonishing number of meaningful choices into a tiny footprint while repeatedly finding clever new ways to make a single penny carry mechanical weight.
This creates an abundance of satisfying decisions and multiple paths to victory. Plus it’s just a lot of fun to puzzle out your best score each time you play!
The game supports solo play or any number of players competing for the highest score.
Setup and first turns
Setup is super easy. Place a coin on the leftmost space of the year track and then flip 4 coins from your supply. All other players will take four coins and match what you flipped (I was playing solo). You then can spend these coins to utilize buildings on the left side of your sheet, commit coins to the barracks, or invest in technology. Once you‘ve filled a building with the appropriate coins you can immediately use the ability (in the appropriate phase). This can create a chain of combos where you gain access to new buildings or effects.
Diving In and Watching Videos
To get up to speed quickly I watched the playthrough video from Tom (slickerdrips) and I highly recommend you do the same. There aren't any particularly complex rules, but the many interconnected systems that make this game sing can feel a little overwhelming at first. However it’s so worth it to learn the game.
Locked Coins
Probably the trickiest concept in the game is how coins have different positions (Locked and Unlocked) creating different meaning. When you place a coin on a space, it starts as unlocked. This means that when you activate a building’s effect all of the coins you used to construct that building will be sent back to your supply. Its a costly but necessary step as you build your empire.
Locked coins allow you to leave the coin on the building after using the building effect. There are a few different ways to Lock your coins (Church, Prosperity rewards etc). The only downside to Locking a coin is that your limited pool of resources are even tighter while the coins stay on the page. It creates a nice tense decision where you can’t do everything each game.
Buildings
One item I’d recommend ignoring in your first play are the victory point icons (in the diamond shape). Those kept confusing me as if they were a cost to build. Once I got past that and realized most 2nd tier buildings (middle of the page) only required a single build icon (and the coins of course) the game started flowing a lot smoother for me. You need one Build icon (Hammer) and a combination of coins shown to construct the inner buildings (and also the monuments).
How to Attack
If you want to conquer territories you’ll need to place coins in the Barracks section of the map (upper left). For each coin there you will flip it—heads is a success. If you equal or exceed the battle value on a province you can capture that space and gain the effect shown. I tried building a Catapult (which provides +2 Battle success) early on but it was a costly resource to use repeatedly.
Technologies
These upgrades act similar to Buildings, but you don't have to use an effect to lock a coin here. Simply fill the tech space with the appropriate amount of coins and you will permanently earn the technology’s effect (you slide one of the coins right to indicate this and return the rest to the supply). These are expensive upgrades so you’ll have to choose carefully where to commit your resources.
The Eras Tour
Postmark Games has promised more gamesheets in the Master of Coin release (called Eras), so we can expect a shakeup of the gameplay and new civilization puzzles to solve. There’s just one pledge level ($5) and that gets you access to all five Era sheets to be released in the future.
You can pledge at Kickstarter here. Campaign ends Sunday, August 2.
I received a complimentary review copy of the game. However, this did not influence my opinions or conclusions.
Bad Bets is an auction game where players bid to win the right to roll dice. Winners make everybody else lose money, but hopefully paid less than what was rolled.
Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Soul Feaster: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. The Sphinx and it’s illusion will confuse and confound the heroes and what’s more? It will deal damage while its doing it. Link.
Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.
Signal and Noise Playthrough (BGG 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest)
Shamus (Out of the Box) takes a look at Signal and Noise, an entry in the BGG 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest. This is a robot programming game. You are remotely controlling six robots with a dynamic instruction set, but every turn cycle noise gets into the signal and can endanger your plans.
Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:
Doodle Bash is a drawing game that packs an insane amount of replayability and depth into a single printed page thanks to a companion app that can be launched by scanning the QR code on your game sheet.
The guys from Postmark Games (Voyages) are back with their latest game!
The King is dead. Long live the Queen. By order of her Royal Highness, gold is to be released from the palace coffers to be assigned to projects of prosperity and growth by appointment of the Master of Coin.
Master of Coin is a 1-many player print at home game from the award winning designers of Voyages and 52 Realms: Adventures. With a printed gamesheet and a handful of coins of any denomination, players will take actions building infrastructure, researching technology, and reclaiming provinces through military might as they develop their own fantasy kingdom. Each round, a pool of flipped coins is used to activate heads and tails spaces on your individual kingdom sheet. At the end of 12 rounds, the player with the most points is crowned the winner.
The Best of the Indie Scene, In One Bundle.
From the publisher:
A few weeks ago, Chris Backe and I put out a call to the tabletop community: Show us your best Print & Play designs. The response blew us away. We received 64 incredible submissions from passionate indie designers around the world. We played, tested, and debated until we narrowed it down to the top finalists—and then we handed the microphone over to you. The community voted, the dust settled, and the winner emerged. Now, we’ve bundled the winning game from the contest and two of our own games into one digital package. By backing this project, you aren't just getting three games, you are directly supporting the indie designers who poured their hearts into these designs, and you are helping fund the prize pool for the winning creators. Zero shipping costs. Zero wait times for manufacturing. Just pure, printable fun.
Coming soon to crowdfunding…
Out Of Print is a bookish solo game system coming from Button Shy, where the player is a fictional character trying to order the pages of their book in order to get out, before the antagonist locks them in the book forever. That sounds quite intense, but the gameplay is quite cozy. You’ll play cards to manipulate dice values, while watching out for the tough antagonist effects. Each book plays differently, such as in Moby Dick you’ll deal with the water moving cards around. Upcoming modules include The Tell-Tale Heart, A Christmas Carol, Wizard Of Oz and more. Coming to Kickstarter soon! Link.
Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.
Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.
Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.
Would you like to submit a PNP Game?
With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.
Click this link to submit information about a game
Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.
Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.
Thanks for the coverage. Some excellent games in the BGG 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest this year.