Rainward
Flow

A backgammon set that plays on a printed sun. Thirty counters stand in 24 lanes cut across a 190 mm disc — each one a 12 × 8 × 4 mm drop, with a heavy head facing the rim and a tail sweeping back toward the middle.

The two players are two tails. Both drops carry the same head and the same leading edge; from there one closes into a single ribbon and the other stays broad and splits. The set ships in two colours but does not need them — the silhouettes tell the sides apart on their own.

12 mm
  • Single-tail drop
  • Split-tail drop
Printed parts
35
Board across
190mm
Counters
30
Support material
0

Follow one drop

One printed disc: a 190 mm sun with 16 rounded lobes on its rim, 24 lanes sunk 0.6 mm into the deck, and an open plateau at the middle.

Thirty drops take the opening position — two, five, three and five to a player, filled from the rim inward.

Head to the rim, tail to the middle. The cream drop's tail runs as one stream; the dark one opens at the very end.

A few throws in, one split-tail has been left alone on its point. A lone drop is not protected.

A single-tail lands on it, 120.2 mm around the rim. The lone drop is lifted onto the flare — 80.0 mm — and waits there to re-enter.

Thirty-five printed pieces and nothing else in the box: the sun, thirty drops, two dice, two cups.

One body, two tails

Both counters start from the same wire: a condensed head, then one long sweep over the top of the tail, the whole silhouette held inside 12 × 8 mm and extruded 4 mm with a flat top and a flat bottom. They separate at the tail cap and do not meet again until the head.

The single-tail closes to a ribbon 2.1 mm across and finishes in one rounded cap. The split-tail stays 4.9 mm across and finishes in two lobes, with a notch 1.3 mm long that opens 0.8 mm — and each lobe still carries the 2.0 mm of material a tail needs to survive being dropped on a table.

An earlier version of this shape divided the tail much further back. A reviewer who had not been told what it was read the result as a rabbit, so the fork was cut down to the length it has now.

12 mm 8

Single-tail drop

Fifteen of these. One unbroken stream from head to cap — 199 mm³ of plastic.

12 mm 8

Split-tail drop

Fifteen of these. The broader tail, opening for its last 1.3 mm — 246 mm³.

Top view of the Rainward Flow board in its opening position A disc with sixteen rounded lobes around its rim, divided into twenty-four lanes by radial grooves, four of them wider. Thirty drop-shaped counters stand in eight lanes, two, five, three and five to a player, each with its head to the rim. The middle is an open circular plateau.

24 lanes, 4 banks

24

lanes, 15° apart, in 4 banks of 6. Each groove is 2 mm wide and 0.6 mm deep and runs from 27 mm out to 88; the four that mark a bank boundary are 3 mm, and they are how you find your home bank.

15

drops fit in one lane — 5 seats at 85 / 72 / 59 / 46 / 33 mm from the middle, stacked 3 deep. A player can pile a whole side onto one point.

48mm

across the flare, the bar a hit drop waits on. It is one uninterrupted plateau 12 mm above the deck with landings for 30 drops; a drop that has just been hit parks 5.9 mm from the middle, with nothing raised on the plateau to work around.

16

lobes around the rim, which is why the disc measures 190 mm at the tips and 180 in the scallops between them. They are the sun's corona, and they are also what your thumb finds when you turn the board to face you.

What comes off the plate

The whole set slices to 6.5 oz of PETG and 14 h 28 m on a 0.4 mm nozzle at 0.2 mm layers. Most of that is the board — 5.2 oz and 10 h 31 m on its own — and everything else together comes to 1.5 oz in 3 h 57 m. Every part stands on a flat face, so there is no support material anywhere and nothing to glue.

The dice are the one job left to you. Their pips are already sunk into the cube as conical pockets, 1.0 mm across the mouth and 1.1 mm deep. Flood them with dark paint, wipe the flat faces, let them cure. You never place a pip.

The full set on a dark table: the marigold sun in its opening position with cream and near-black drops standing in eight of its lanes, a rust dice cup on either side and the two ivory dice in front.
Everything that ships, in the position you start from. The cups are open, 42 mm outside and 28 mm tall with 2 mm walls, and the pair of dice lives in one of them.
Close view along the deck: a row of near-black split-tail drops and a row of cream single-tail drops standing in neighbouring lanes, printed layer lines running around each silhouette.
Two lanes at the rim, one player each. The layer lines wrap the outline, so the notch in the dark tails is the first thing your eye lands on.
The two ivory dice on the dark table beside the board's rim, photographed straight off the printer with their pip pockets still unpainted.
16 mm cubes, printed solid, before the pockets are filled. Opposite faces total seven and every pip is cut by the model, not drawn on it.
Printed parts
35
Board
11.1 × 8.6 × 1.1 in
Counters
30, 15 a side
Counter size
12 × 8 × 4 mm
Dice
2 × 16 mm, solid
Cups
2 × 42 mm, 38 mm bore
Material
PETG
Filament
6.5 oz
Print time
14 h 28 m
Layer height
0.2 mm
Infill
15%, dice solid
Support material
0
Ships within
14 days

Order the set

Printed in PETG and shipped within 14 days. The listing carries the current price, the colourways and the rest of the description.

VB-MXB53P8B, licensed CC BY-NC-SA. The rules that ship with the set follow the ordinary game as the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica gives it. The dice have not been tested for statistical fairness.