I currently print out the cards to my laserjet cut them out and laminate them.

But does anyone have any advice for printing the moster cards and boards that come with a lot of the new creations please?

Cheers

Well, if money's not that big of an issue, you can buy the small-box expansion with the most monsters and tape it on them (you could also use the items cards, mythos, etc. for the rest of the cards)

Some of the larger things, like boards, you are probably going to need something larger then a standard home printer.

You can buy card stock paper for your printer, as well as cardboard similar to monster tokens for your printer as well. You will need to either print the front and back of a card side by side and fold them over, or print on both sides of the paper; then carefully cut.

Something I have known people to do with custom cards:
1. Buy a couple boxes of trading/ccg individual card protectors (solid backing, not see through backing) and a few decks of regular playing cards (varies based on number needed)
2. Print off the custom cards on regular paper, front only
3. Insert the normal game cards into the protectors
4. Take the custom cards and insert them into the protectors with a regular playing card to stiffen the protector to feel like a normal card
5. Figure out a way to label the various decks of cards

dkw said:

If the board was designed in SE, then you can print it on regular paper. Click "Split Page for Printing...". Even if you want to send the final version to a printing service, it is quite handy for printing drafts. I have found that some printers with don't work well with this feature, but I've never had a problem if I print to a PDF first, then print the PDF (though this will reduce the quality of the output unless you change the deault PDF settings). I recommend either a small test print or printing to PDF first before you send a big board and learn the hard way whether it works.

Cheers,
Chris

dkw said:

Not a problem as I have an A0 plotter.

It is the bonding of the printed item to suitable card that is flummoxing me

What I've done with encounter and mythos cards is, I've printed the front and back, separate sheets, on regular matte photo paper. Then I've cut them out a little bit generously on three sides, and use a paper trimmer to cut on one of the longer sides. Use a stick of paper glue on the blank sides of both, align them by putting the trimmed sides against the table, and then glue them together. Place the cards between two sheets of paper and press gently to make sure they're attached properly. After a moment's waiting, I use the trimmer again to remove the extra from the other edges, so that the pictures are centered, and the edges of both papers match well.

As a finishing touch, I've used a black permanent marker to color the "inside" cut edge of the card where the white of the paper shows.

After all of this, the cards are pretty good, but the texture is still a little different. As my final solution, I've put all the encounter/mythos sized decks into card sleeves (ones that are sold for trading card games), after which they become extremely hard to distuingish from the originals. They're the same weight, same size, and the texture looks and feels the same through the sleeve. The only give-away is the very slight difference in hues between the cards, but there's a small difference in hue between different expansions too, so I think that's okay.

The downside is that it is a bit of work, but the end-result is extremely good, while still being quite affordable. Bought a stack of matte photo paper for $10, a stick of glue for a dollar, and the sleeves are usually less than a dollar for 100 sleeves.

I've thought about double-sided printing as well, but I've yet to find cardstock that has a good surface for a very detailed printing result on both sides, is thick enough, and isn't terribly expensive.

EDIT: I just realized that I replied to the wrong thread, since this one was mostly about the board/monster ones. My bad. At least it doesn't betray the original name of the topic.

I usually do this:

-I pick an expansion that I'm not going to use for the current game (e. g. King in Yellow).

-I write an Excel file associating Custom cards to such expansion's cards (e.g. "Press Pass = Sniper Rifle", "Riot = Pope Ratzinger", and so on).

-whenever any such expansion's card is drawn, we check it out in the table.

It's not the best method, but allows us to play without printing or using glue on cards.

The main bright side is that this way you can't recognise custom cards in the decks.

Check the References forum. I saved a note telling you the exact size you need for printing components.

For monsters, add all the (unneeded) Spawn monsters to the cup. When a Spawn Monster is drawn, draw from a seperate cup containing the home-brewed monsters. In this way, you won't be able to tell the regular monsters from the new ones when drawing from the cup.

Gotta post this method I've started using for monster tokens:

Canvas/textured matt printer paper

Card stock (I know it is sacrilege but I've cut up the game box)

Double sided sticky tape

Craft knife & metal ruler & cutting board

Export a .jpeg from SEons, best possible dpi (600); also combine image.

By comparing a 'text' print with an original monster token I note the correct %. - On my no frills Epson this is an A4 page divided into 16 with a % reduction to 64%.

Now I print up to 16 monster token images using 'Best Photo'.

Holding the paper up to the light I mark the corners on the reverse and then stick on the tape.

I slice the image in half so I now have seperate front & back, and then stick the front on to card stock and slice round it; the back I cut to size with scissors and stick to the underside.

The monster tokens look great and once in the cup you can not tell the difference.

Laborious? Yes, but well worth it. I did the entire monsters from Cult of the Golden Scarab over two evenings whilst watching TV.