The Acorn Cauldron

Beginner · 5 min read · By Chitmunk Team · Updated Oct 18, 2026

The Acorn Cauldron is Chitmunk's recipe-driven AI art tool: one prompt template with {{Column Name}} tokens, one spreadsheet, one batch of card art for the whole deck. A style keeps every card visually consistent. Think "ink and watercolor fantasy illustration" as the throughline across 60 monster portraits. Brew up to four variations of each card and pick your favorite. The Cauldron runs on AI credits: every new account gets a one-time 10-credit bonus, Rare gets 100 credits every month, and Epic gets 500. This guide covers writing a prompt, brewing the deck, and choosing between variations.

Think of it as prototyping art. The Cauldron gives you placeholder illustrations you can playtest with right now, so you can see how your game feels with real imagery instead of blank rectangles. When your game is ready for production, commission an artist to replace the placeholders with professional work. Until then, every card gets a face.

How It Works

Open the Cauldron from the Ai Image button in the Add toolbar (it adds an empty image box and opens the Cauldron for it), from Generate with AI in an image's AI generation section of the inspector, from right-click, Generate AI Image on a selected image, or from Ctrl+K, "AI art (Acorn Cauldron)". It is one panel, not a multi-step wizard: write your prompt, pick a style, and brew.

1. Prompt: Describe the card art you want. With a spreadsheet loaded, your columns appear as clickable {{Column}} pills you drop into the prompt, and a preview shows how row 1 reads; free text between the pills stays the same for every card, only the pill values change per row. Click "Show example prompts" to browse 130 built-in prompts across eight themes: Characters, Creatures, Locations, Buildings, Objects, Effects, Patterns, and Tarot.
2. Style: Pick an art style that applies to your whole deck: five quick-pick chips (Classic Fantasy, Dark & Gritty, Watercolor, Ink & Woodcut, Flat & Clean) plus "See all 10" for Storybook, Comic Book, Art Nouveau, Military, and Photorealistic. "No style" leaves the prompt as you wrote it. The style you choose seasons every image the Cauldron produces, so your cards look like they belong together.
3. Variations: Choose 1 image or 4 images per card (4 is the default). The credit cost updates live before you commit.
4. Brew: With no spreadsheet loaded, Brew makes images for the one prompt. With a spreadsheet loaded, the button reads "Brew 60 cards" (your row count) and makes art for every row at once. You can close the panel while it runs; finished images are saved under Brewed, which is kept with your project.

When the results appear, click an image to put it on the card. With a spreadsheet, Put on all N cards places each row's first image on its card, and Brew again runs the whole batch again. The Cauldron has no per-card re-roll, so to dial in one card, test the prompt with the spreadsheet link removed (see the tip below).

There's also a Card frame mode (the other tab at the top of the panel) for generating a single decorative border or frame image for the whole deck, with presets to start from, instead of per-card subject art.

Writing Good Prompts

The prompt is the heart of the Cauldron. A well-written prompt produces better art with less fiddling. Here are the key principles:

• Use descriptive language, not keywords. "A fearsome dragon perched on a rocky peak, wings spread wide against a stormy sky" works far better than "dragon, rock, fire, wings."
• Use {{Column}} pills for the parts that change per card. If your spreadsheet has a Name column and a Type column, drop those pills into the prompt so each card gets its own subject.
• Keep static text for the parts that stay consistent. Pose, framing, detail level, and composition should be the same across the deck. That consistency is what makes your cards look like a set.
• Start from an example prompt. The built-in library has 130 prompts in eight themes (Characters, Creatures, Locations, Buildings, Objects, Effects, Patterns, Tarot). Click one to drop it into the box, then customize it. Empty prompts and untouched examples are replaced without asking; your own text is kept.
• Let the spreadsheet fill it in. With a spreadsheet loaded, picking a Characters, Creatures, Locations, or Objects example inserts a matching prompt with column pills (for example "a fearsome {{Subtype}} known as {{Name}}, {{Flavor Text}}"). Tweak it rather than starting from scratch.

Speed and Cost

Each image takes about two seconds and costs credits in proportion to its size, 5 credits for every 512×512 block:

• A 512×512 thumbnail costs 5 credits.
• A 1024×1024 card-sized image costs 20 credits.
• A 2048×2048 hero image costs 80 credits.

A card-sized image box is usually between the first two. Four variations of every card in a 60-card deck cost 4 × 60 images, so check the cost line next to Brew before you start. Rare gives you 100 credits per month; Epic gives you 500. Credits reset on your subscription anniversary, and the one-time 10 starter credits never expire. Common accounts can spend the starter credits; after that, AI art is part of Rare and Epic.

Tips for Board Game Card Art

• Leave room for text. Ask for the subject "centered, with empty space at the top and bottom" so title bars, stat boxes, and flavor text sit on calm areas.
• Pick one style and stick with it. Consistency across a deck matters more than any single image looking spectacular. A unified watercolor deck feels more professional than a mix of stunning but mismatched styles.
• Test one card, then batch the rest. Brew 4 variations of a key card to dial in framing, color palette, and composition. Once you are happy, brew the full deck in one go.
• Art generates at your element's exact dimensions. No wasted pixels, no awkward cropping. The Cauldron reads the size of your image box and requests art at that size (up to 2048×2048 pixels).