I bought a couple decks of blank Bicycle brand cards from a magic shop, and used a permanent marker to just write on them. But at $15 a pop for the cards and with the frequency we're changing the number and type of spells this is going to add up really quickly.
I'm just wondering what everyone else uses for cards when making their decks.
- Andrew
I've used perforated business cards:
http://www.avery.com/avery/en_us/Products/Cards/Business-Cards/Laser-Bus... 4294965620&Ns=Price|0&refchannel=f51d27e814d0a110VgnVCM1000002118140aRCRD
As my title suggests, I use card stock (easy to print). If I'm worried about see-through-ness or shuffling a lot, I put it in a card sleeve with a magic land (or something else I can get for free) behind it.
I paid maybe $1-2 for cheap decks of 54 cards and got some printable sticky name badges that I stuck to the cards;
pros - fairly cheap and it allows me to type the cards (my handwriting is HORRIBLE); decent prototype quality
cons - changes to cards are still handwritten and my hands turned blue after smoothing the stickers onto the cards; cheap cards = cheap ink!
pros - fairly cheap and it allows me to type the cards (my handwriting is HORRIBLE); decent prototype quality
cons - changes to cards are still handwritten and my hands turned blue after smoothing the stickers onto the cards; cheap cards = cheap ink!
I have really bad handwriting too, which means that so far my fiance has been tasked with doing all the writing for me. She's been a really good sport about this, but I can only keep asking her to re-write an entire deck of cards so many times, so any method I can type is going to save my hide.
Where are you finding the cheap cards? I must be looking in the wrong places cause I can't find them for $1 - 2.
I usually start with index cards cut in half. Very inexpensive.
Card stock in sleeves works well but all the cutting is time consuming (really depends on how many cards).
The game crafter offers blank cards for prototyping: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/parts/blank-poker-cards
Of course they can print them as well but I would wait until things are nearly finalized first.
I suggest you get some decent free software to make the text and images and print it our on cardstock. If you use Linux then there are a good number of choices, or open office works fine, too.
Then just print on cardstock or (even better IMO) on scrapbook paper.
To cut, I suggest investing a few dollars (20-30) in a paper cutter. Sounds like it would be cheaper than the decks of cards you're buying now.
If you worry about seeing through them, just print then cut and glue a dark card stock or paper to the back.
I also found cheap cards of multiple sizes at target in their $1 area, but this can vary season to season- so just keep your eyes open.
Cheap cards - you can usually pick up M:TG Lands for about a penny each. Plus, there are always Dollar-store packs of playing cards. Offbrand Bicycle and the like. Quality isn't much of an issue when anything professionally made is going to be better than just printing some paper and cutting the cards yourself.
Another option is to go looking for online card-building apps. I know there have got to be a few that let you program a card into the system and create a deck with it. This is obviously better for solo-games or initial solo playtesting.
I've found that some office supply stores actually sell half sized index cards. I bought a pack of 100 half cards in 5 colors (20 each) for under $1.50. Obviously these don't work for sleeves, and would be difficult to print on, but they are nice and cheap, and are pre-cut evenly. Not a bad budget solution if your cards don't include too much information to hand write and cram into a small space.
Wal-mart, Target, The Dollar Store - I agree, this was probably a seasonal deal, but that season was Summer and we are almost there (assuming you live in the US :) )
Old, penny magic cards also work great; you can usually find boxes of failed CCG for cheap as well
I print out on cardstock. For playtesting I dont even bother to sleeve - its not so annoying. Paper printing, yes, you need to sleeve.
I tend to do most of my playtest printing at Kinkos. They print on stock, its not much more expensive then printing myself, someone else is dealing with the sheet feeding, I can print all the ink and toner I want :) low-ink be damned.
As for cutting: invest in a paper cutter. twenty bucks. a few cuts and you've got a small deck of cards. Easy peasy.
This.
Easy and fast :)
I make changes too fast to go to the trouble of designing them on a computer and printing them. So I use index cards and cut them in half too. 42 cents at walmart for 100. (200 cards) When I make a change i throw it out and use a new one.
I got some blank playing cards from the Dollar tree, (half the deck was blank on front half blank on back so only 26 with same backs) But I never ended up using them.
When Im to a point to have strangers playtest, and want them to see artwork too, I just print them on cardstock and use a paper cutter to cut them out.
What I have done :
printed out the frontside, and backside of the cards on a cheet, and cut them out with a utilityknife like this : http://www.maxbo.no/upload/Produkter/Tapet/Tapetverkt%C3%B8y/Scaled/spar...
Then I have made slight cut between the frontside and backside with the same knife, to make it easy to fold over.
And then foled the cards over a double sided tape like this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4244767/cards.JPG
I have bought multiple old board games (f.e. trivia games) from thrift stores and use these cards.
Print cards-design to label-A4 sheets, cut and paste them to cards.
I bought a Kardkutter and use it to cut uniform cards, having printed A4 sheets of 350gsm card fairly cheaply online. Here's a review I did:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/765941/kardkutter-review-and-tips
For early prototypes, I just print on paper and either cut out with the kardkutter (cutting 3 or 4 pages at once) or scissors (when I can't be bothered fetching the machine from its hiding place)
My previous project was a very large ccg design that housed three factions. A blue, a grey, and red. When I started the game design it was only going to be at least 600 cards. And was going with an rpg feel. More details were needed and it went to 10,000 cards for each colored faction house. I took my time b cutting out the cards on graph paper due to the fact that I had no computer and no way of figuring out how to design with a card program. So I went with what I knew and went what was cheapest. In a one months time,I had cut 16,000 cards by hand. Empressive? I know right. Plus it kept me busy. That game is in game limbo for right now. I will get back to it when I get the chance.
The newest game project went from graph paper to stock index cards. I buy a package of three for 3.88 at Walmart. I return home and cut the in half. I cut Three to four cards together for a speed cut. I havn't seen the index cards already halved at the store.
I wish i knew some time of programming that would help. I have seen the M:TG card program, but not what I am looking for. But at this time, its okay.
If you happen to play any CCGs, you probably have a plethora of card sleeves lying around. If you don't, you can pick some up for about $10 per hundred at a local card/comic shop. While you're there, pick up some bulk junk cards that they have lying around--if it costs you anything at all, it will probably be very inexpensive.
There's a program you can get from the link below called Magic Set Editor. Its a very easily program you can use to create custom card designs, then insert images in for illustrations. If you use their stock designs, just remember they're fine for most prototypes, but the fonts/designs/etc are copyrighted by Hasbro so you don't want to try and sell them.
Designing my game, I just printed out sheets from the Magic Set Editor (9 cards to a page) on regular paper and cut them up with a paper cutter at the local print shop. Then I sleeved up the junk CCG cards and put in the paper MSE designs over them, and they work great.
If you have multiple different types of cards in your game, you can even get different colored card sleeves to distinguish them from one another. My only complaint would be that if you have a tremendous amount of cards (500+) then the added width of the sleeves gives it the volume of twice that many cards. If you're not familiar with shuffling sleeved cards (aka riffling), you could risk splitting the sleeves and that's kind of irritating--however, if you're good at it, riffling is actually a way faster way of shuffling that doesn't bend your cards.
Thank you for the advice. My friend and I will look it over again.
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Such a simple solution and it never even occurred to me. Thanks :)