Publishing Advice - Custom playing cards & tuck boxes
Posted by: Sebastian Hickey On: Apr 30th 2011
Hey guys (especially Iain and Joe),
I'm looking for a printer to print 175-ish decks of custom cards and custom tuck boxes to match. Anyone have any suggestions about where to look?
So far I'm checking out PrinterStudio and Ivory printing (see Praxis post).
Sebastian.
Posted by: Gregor Hutton On: May 5th 2011
Hello Sebastian
The two places that I know of are Guild of Blades (http://www.guildofblades.com/about.php) who Iain used (somewhat) successfully for B-Movie and B-Movie 2, but who wouldn't respond to Joe Prince when he wanted to print Pro-Wrasslin' Battle Royale with them.
Joe ended up using The Game Crafter (http://thegamecrafter.com/) for PWBR. They have an online price estimation thing so you can see how much the decks, etc. will cost you. Having spoken to them at GenCon the last few years I am impressed with them.
You're ahead of me with PS and IP. I've never heard of them (but then again I'm not looking for a card/tuck box printer).
Anyway, good luck with getting quotes and I hope to hear of your progress.
Posted by: Iain McAllister On: May 7th 2011
Hi Sebastian,
I have a good relationship with Guild of Blades as I was one of their earlier customers, and generally I can get a reply out of them quickly. However I have had problems using email, I have Ryan on my Skype and usually contact him that way. I tried poking him for Joe but to no avail. No idea if that situation has improved.
I am working on a new card game as well, so I will be looking around to see who else is doing POD cards. My thought is that the tech is there, so other people must be doing it, but maybe wrapped up in a 'Print your family photos onto playing cards' type business.
What I found with some of the people who do 'Custom playing cards' is that they will only really do them in a standard deck size of 54 with a tuck box to match, as printing anything larger, especially in terms of of the tuck box, means a lot of work for them resizing cutters etc.
Keep us posted on your progress, and I'll join the search for new ways to print cards.
Cheers
Iain
Posted by: Iain McAllister On: May 7th 2011
Just had a quick look and found this
which looks kind of promising. May give them a bell and get a small B-Movie run to test them out.
Nothing else popping up at the mo, though I will endeavour to find out who Fantasy Flight are doing their stuff through. They have enlisted the services of a POD printer to do small expansions for games like Death Angel, which is ace and you should all play.
Iain
Posted by: Joe Prince On: May 7th 2011
I totally won Death Angel just today!
Good find Iain, I have been struggling with tuck boxes for a long while now. Will give these dudes a whirl - hope shipping is not too expensive.
Posted by: Iain McAllister On: May 7th 2011
Slightly off topic here..
Death Angel is really good. Probably one of the best coop games out there at the moment. One piece of advice. There is a rule about not discussing which card you are about to play every turn. I would stick to this rule. It sounds odd and slightly counter intuitive in a coop game, but we found it made things flow a lot better and made the game more interesting as we tried to work out what the other members of the team were doing.
Posted by: Sebastian Hickey On: May 11th 2011
Hi Iain,
Death Angel is fun! Let's have a game when I'm up there next.
In other news, I found PrinterStudio, who will do 151 decks for around $600.
Here's an image of the prototype:
http://cobwebgames.com/images/imagestorage/cos/protosfromcam.jpeg
And here's a short video of the cards:
http://cobwebgames.com/index.php/chronicles-of-skin-prototype/
Posted by: Iain McAllister On: May 11th 2011
Those look really good Sebastian. What's the card weight and quality like? What sort of turnaround have they given you on the cards?
Cheers
Iain
Posted by: Sebastian Hickey On: May 18th 2011
They feel nice, and the print quality is high, though a tiny, tiny, tiny bit off-centre. They shipped the produce to me with 8 working days, including production. Very fast.
The only problem is the lack of tuck boxes. Now I'm investigating SuperiorPOD as a card printing solution.
Posted by: Iain McAllister On: May 22nd 2011
Have you had anything back from them? I sent them an enquiry about getting samples about a week and a half ago and they still haven't been back to me.
It may be possible to get the tuck boxes done elsewhere if the card quality is good.
I'll look around.
Iain
Posted by: Joe Prince On: May 25th 2011
And in more waiting around based news, I'm awaiting a delivery from SuperiorPOD, to see their handling of Pro-Wrasslin' Battle Royale (PWBR).
Hopefully two new wrasslers' and a tuck box coming soon!
I ordered on 13/5/11.
Posted by: Iain McAllister On: May 26th 2011
I haven't even had a reply to my initial enquiry. Let me know how it goes Joe.
Cheers
Iain
Posted by: Sebastian Hickey On: May 26th 2011
Hi Iain,
I got a quote from them at $6.60 including shipping for each 72 card deck with rules sheet and custom tuck box. The turnaround is a month though! My guess: They get the order, have it manufactured in China, get the product and ship it out. It has to be a middle-man scenario.
Posted by: Joe Prince On: May 27th 2011
Well would you Adam and Eve it, my order actually arrived on Tuesday but I missed it and had to pick it up from the post office yesterday.
Seems good, cards are *marginally* better quality than Gamecrafter. The tuck boxes are cool, no need for assembly, the complete decks I ordered even came shrink wrapped. The boxes are slightly misaligned, this could be a problem with my file though it seems wise to build breathing room into the future tuck box design.
All told it set me back 40 bucks for 3x 72 card decks, 3 rules sheets and 6 tuck boxes. Shipping was the major expense at $15. Turnaround of under 2 weeks, not too shabby.
I'm looking forward to gaming with the new specials and wrasslers I added to make up the 72 card count!
Posted by: Sebastian Hickey On: May 28th 2011
Thanks for the feedback! I'm interested, do the cards come packaged inside the boxes when they arrived, or did you have to pack them yourself?
Posted by: Joe Prince On: May 29th 2011
The decks come in the shrink-wrapped boxes.
Posted by: Iain McAllister On: May 31st 2011
In comparison, when I get stuff from Guild of Blades I have to put the boxes together myself. Sounds like they might be a good option, though I'll have to look at costs.
Cheers
Iain
Posted by: Joe Prince On: Jul 13th 2011
Brief update - I got my second order from Superior PoD in just under a month (using their automated online process).
I've been playing about with tuckboxes for PWBR and Golden Age Contenders - its getting there!
Posted by: Sebastian Hickey On: Jul 16th 2011
Cool. Any pictures of the tuck boxes and such like?
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