Making Cards...

There are many threads on this board about card prototypes. I recently found that some laser printers can handle 10pt cardstock cut to 8.5 x 11. My home laser couldn't, but the ones here at work could. It makes doing prototypes easy if you have 10pt card stock lying around.

For a first prototype I suggest you just print the cards on regular paper. Put them into card sleeves with a real playing card behind them to give it a better feel and allows for shuffling. The upside of doing it like this is the ability to rapidly change throughout the play test process.

I have done quite a few real decks of cards so I have gotten to be efficient yet it’s not worth the time and materials when changes are likely to be needed.

If you are submitting to publishers glue that card face onto a blank card with spray glue, trim, powder (talcum) to make sure no un-dried glue particles remain to stick them together.

Finding publishers that take submissions and will be interested in what you have is a bit harder. I manage to get my games shown to publishers through a combination of tenacity and through contacts I have made in the industry over the past 6 years. Since you don’t have contacts yet you’ll have to get by with good old fashion determination.

There are hundreds of publishers, you’ll need to start looking them up checking the website for submission policy and then determine if they would be interested. Don’t bother submitting a game to a company that is obviously not their style and don’t submit the same game to two different publishers at the same time. A good way to get a list of publishers is to go to www.boardgamegeek.com and do a search for all the games published in 2009. Even in this market you can almost guarantee that the publishers of those games are still in business.

Good luck

If you ever played TCG (tradable card games) like Magic the Gathering or World of Warcraft, then you can play your card like a proxy card. If you don't know what I'm talking about then what i mean is that you can get a bunch of World of Warcraft cards (at a hobby shop) then buy card protectors for them (plastic card sleeves). You slip a card into a card sleeve, then you print out your card for your game on paper, cut it to the size and then slip it in between the card and the sleeve. The card will hold its form and shuffling will be much much easier. If your new to this, the plastic will be slippery at first, but after playing with them they will be less slippery.

Ultra Pro is a good brand, i suggest you buy those, not the weak transparent one, get the better quality solid colors ones, if you use multiply decks for your game, then buy different colors for each deck. Hope this helps. =)

Here is ultrapro's website, dont buy the art background, just look for the solid back colors (its cheaper than the art ones).
http://www.ultrapro.com/page.php?pname=gaming/deck_protectors&PHPSESSID=...

professional cards of card game need special card paper material, normally inside this card paper there are grey, blue or black material in order not to be see through because game play and gambling use.
After printing, it also need be twice coating by special resin in order to have stong game cards and good feeling and to protect inside printing. then go on to next cut process, etc.
So in order to get perfect prototypes of your cards, you need work with professional board and card game manfuacturer who can give you very cost-effective solution if you tell them your truth and situation.

Ningbo Lijia Industry Co., Ltd.
www.cnlijia.com.cn
sales1[AT]cnlijia.com.cn

I've been planning to create a custum deck of cards and would like to know the best way to make the best quality of card myself, without ordering from a manufacturer, the closest to playing card quality. I wonder how cards get there snap. My first attempt was not so good but functional. I cut out 56 cards of the same size using cardstock. Then I stamped the numbers and design on with ink. Not suprising the ink rubs off over the other cards and they get messy looking. I don't want plastic sleeves. I supose I could use some kind of clearcoat maybe art fixative or something that you know is better. How do you make the best quality. I am only looking at making 8 to 10 decks. Mostly for myself to last me as decks get old and worn out. Could you describe your process in more detail please?

This is great! Thank you for this Dralius! The powder sounds like such a brilliant touch to the process. I can't wait to try it and don't mind the effort since I'm not making a lot of decks.

I came up with using talc because I had to. A publisher requested a second copy of a game to send to an overseas partner for review and they wanted it next morning. I said ok even though it’s a major project to construct a 112 card deck this way. Being in a hurry I was a little sloppy and when it was finished you couldn’t hardly shuffle the thing because of stray glue particles, which are like rubber. Fortunately I had the powder to fix the problem. The game didn’t pass muster but I did keep my word and delivered it on time which is very important to me and probably important to them since they are currently in the process of doing the production evaluation on another game of mine.

My method:

Print the cards on cardstock. Laminate with Xyron two-sided cold laminate. Trim down to card size. Round corners if it's a card game where the cards get shuffled a lot (otherwise I don't bother rounding). They shuffle perfectly and last for ages. It's a bit of work, but the quality is outstanding.

The laser printer I used for many years (until the fuser started to fail) was a Lexmark e320. It's a really decent laser printer that will print on a decent weight card stock. If you can pick up one that has a good fuser at a good price, I'd recommend it. The laser printer I use now is a Samsung CLP-310. It's a color laser printer, which is neat, but it can't handle card stock as thick as the Lexmark and it can only hold 10 sheets of cardstock at a time. It's okay, but I miss my Lexmark e320 (which I still have and can print onto plain paper with just fine). The ink-jet printer I use is a Canon S9000. It's a straight pass-through photo-quality printer that can go as large as 13" x 19".

Edit: Two things to note: (1) The ink dries just fine. (2) When I say "card stock", I'm referring to the un-laminated, non-glossy, heavy paper product that you'd buy in an office supply store that is labeled as card stock. Stuff like this: http://www.staples.com/office/supplies/p4_Staples-Card-Stock_49078_Busin... – I'm not referring to what playing cards are printed on.

Probably not the answer you want, but i do it in the image program (i use gimp, but do the same thing on the odd occasion when i'm using OO draw or paint). Drag the text box to the size you want, turn the word wrap on, and type everything out. Once it's all there, you just keep making the font smaller until all the text is visible in the box.