Aside from what I've heard of people buying ungrade packs to label new cards over them, what are other people doing to produce cards from scratch with "printable" backsides?

I scanned the backs into my computer and hope to print them on label paper or just plane 'ol paper and see how that goes.

This is all untested as of yet. I will probably use the photo print setting.

Another option I just thought of is to try and use the card set creator that is over on the Warp Zone Talisman fan site. You can add different card backs to the program. The 4e adventure cards are smaller than 2e so it may work for that at least, with a little manipulation of the graphic.

It probably won't work for character cards however.

Hey Feldrik. A lot of what you mention I already considered. I've done high res scans of card backs, but it wasn't very pleasing. Even after an hour in Photoshop CS4 I wasn't satisfied with the result. The gloss plus texture coating produced a horrible image marred by refraction. And the moire pattern of off-set printing was almost impossible to compensate even at 600ppi.

I don't care to buy another whole upgrade pack or whole game just for decent card backs. It wouldn't be enough anyway. Oh well... maybe someday FFG will think about selling packages of blanks at decent price with backing already printed.

This is indeed a conundrum. I bought a load of card protectors for my original 4TH ED cards and Spells which sufficed.

However, the protectors were a wee too big for the 4th ED versions so I dread to think how badly the revised edition cards would fit!

This is one of the reasons why I decided to add variation in to the game through the addition of new decks. Making compatible Adventure Cards is a challenge which is always going to require some sort of cash expenditure.

I briefly toyed with the idea of sticking alternative backs on to them and then laminating the adventure cards. Perhaps if I purchased another upgrade and reaper, I'd do something like this and could then add new cards to my hearts content. However, that many laminated cards would be difficult to manage without some kind of box construction, similar to what JC has already built.

Of course, it would be better if SOMEONE could produce card protectors that fit the Talisman cards...

I have some templates for the backs in the same format as the others. I will get them up on the site at some point, but you will still have the problem that they will not be "textured" like original cards.

I think lack of texturing is acceptable. We can only go so far with home made cards in trying to make them look and feel exactly link commercial ones. I remember the days of 2nd edition, when even commercial expansion card backs sometimes varied a bit in hue from the standard deck. No one really cared.

And Jon, if you've got some for us ... major kudos to you!!!! It might also be a way for the rest of use to avoid unnecessary bulking of our expansion zip files. We can simply point all players to go directly to Talismanisland to download card backs to use with out expansions.

I've been reworking the other templates and have made them "card sized" now. I have also added in the backs necessary and changed the fonts used to free versions. Grammateus is a clone of Caxton and is only slightly off from the original. I've also made a new version of Windlass, called Windlass-r, which uses the correct R without the flowing tail for ease of use.

I'm going to look into creating them for Gimp as well as PS this time, but it will take a little while.

I've also been looking at a way so that people can make cards without fancy software packages, but this has rather stalled currently.

Awesome work, Jon! The card backs alone will be a great boon to everyone, I'm sure. For the rest, there's no hurry, as I think most of us creating cards are usually compentent to savvy in graphics software of some kind.

Yes very nice Jon. I used Gimp for some print outs in the past and had great results!

Hey Jon... just a quick check to see if there's anything new to report on your template work.

I'm also interested in the templates, particularly the card backs.

Incidentally, just in case no one else has done it already, I just set up (and uploaded to BoardGameGeek) a couple of full-sheet (8.5x11) Photoshop templates with guide lines where the edges of cards would be, so when you create a new card, you can just copy & paste it in, and position it with "Snap to Guide" turned on, to print out multiple cards on a single sheet.

I have not yet finished with the templates, but I will try and make the cardbacks available at some point in the next week.

Thanks Jon. And don't worry about the hurry. Any of use doing fan work know life comes first.