Hi my name is Bhenji and here at Dice vs Cards we are looking to spread the word of board games, card games, tabletop games and everything inbetween.
Our primary goals are to get new people in to the hobby, provide existing gamers with "no nonsense" and "straight to the point" information and reviews about games, whilst giving informed opinions about what games may be of interest to those with varying levels of interest in gaming. We will strive to be the most accessible and approachable gaming channel on RU-vid and welcome feedback and community engagement at all times.
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For anyone in the future, I've had success with 300GSM cover cardstock and printable vinyl used for stickers. Print a full sheet then apply the vinyl to the cardstock. If you want to go all out.. attempt double sides but I can never get them aligned. A 3-4mm rounder isn't perfect but will be close enough. Every way is different but what really matters with proxies is that they are good enough to be playable. Attempting to replicate the process they use for real ones is not feasible on small scale, then again why would you need to unless you are attempting to scam people that they are real? What we want is a 90% close enough I would imagine.
Do you do 300gsm and no lamination? Also are you printing proxies on the paper or just on a vinyl sticker and just stick it on the card stock? I'm wanting to print directly on paper, flip, print backs, cut, round, sleeves.
@@chomper1329 The print quality on paper just is not as good, the stickers are so thin they add almost no weight to the end product but end up being much higher quality and the vinyl is more resistant to tear and water than the paper alone is similar to how MTG cards coating is. So get a 110lb cover stock (300GSM hard to find) and vinyl printable sticker paper (amazon), then print on the sticker paper and attach it to the coverstock carefully. The cardstock that WotC uses is a coated 300gsm blue core card stock and it's not possible to find as far as I know for regular consumer printers. I don't print backs because they are always sleeved but I also like using a black cardstock because it looks nice when finished. The corner on proxies is 2mm btw, and 3mm for alpha/beta cards. It's more effort than just printing on cardstock, but if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
@@williamforsythe5850 You came through! I was thinking just stickers over junk cards... But the 110+sticker works if all cards are the same right? Laser or inkjet for stickers and how to your get out to lay correctly?
@@chomper1329 Inkjet can technically do more vivid prints but I got an Brother HL-L3220CDW LED laser printer and the fact that it prints mostly without any issue is a god-send for printing cards. Laser is inherently more waterproof and inkjet is always issue after issue for me and massive amounts of wasted sheets getting the colors to all work correctly when printing (clogged heads, bleeds, misalignment, It's terrible). I would honestly say go brother brand laser just for the consistency if you are fine with slightly less vivid colors. For alignment front and back I have no idea how to make it perfect. As far as printing size, MTG cards are 63mm x 88mm exactly. When I make custom cards I made a 63x88mm (300dpi) photoshop blank image to import finished card pictures into, then size the card to the template exactly. I then copy paste that sized image into an 8.5"x11" printing template (us letter size) to print them with. If you set lower margins like .35" on the 8.5x11you can fit 9 cards vertically on there with cut lines if you want to include those. If you are printing existing MTG proxies that are not custom, go to mtgprint (.com) and input your cards to print and use the template they give when you input 9 or more cards. Make sure to print a mock up and compare the size your printer makes them to a real card, but 100% scale with no fitting to print area should work fine. Always print with quality over speed at highest DPI it will allow. If you download higher quality images from somewhere like scryfall, then use the card template you got from mtgprint and impose the pictures you download over it. It's much more time intensive but could give better results potentially for some card printings. With the sticker paper, glossy and matte both work well, honestly I can't tell which I like better. Matte looks more naturally played, gloss looks more shiny new, but both work. The one I use for my sticker shop is JANDJPACKAGING (140 g) on amazon, they are incredibly sticky, print well and are cheap. Perfect for MTG proxy imo.
I have a similar method (even the laminated thing you shared on the previous video). The main difference is the software. For me, I found it was easier to use Scribus (or inDesign / Affinity Publisher) instead of Photoshop - I think you'll have less steps when handling multiple pages. Give it a try ;) And thank you for sharing the experience
Thank you so much for this amazing tutorial. My question is how do you get the high quality images to fit in one of the card slots? I downloaded and mpc version from proxynexus, opened the image but I have to scale it down to fit within the borders... It would have been nice to describe that step
You're very welcome, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Sounds like you'll need to resize the images to fit, in photoshop you can use CTRL + T to transform the size of the image to 744 pixels x 1039 pixels, so long as your canvas is in 300ppi (as in the template) and that should get them to fit. Alternatively you can use data driven graphics like I showed recently in this video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LgP7FRLso8s.html and it'll resize the images for you as they're imported.
Really helpful video! I’m making my own proxy currently using your method from your old video. I will be using this method to speed things up. Do you have any information on the required printing settings for obtaining best results? I have been printing on the paper you have suggested but I am getting varying results. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thank you, I'm glad you found it helpful. As far as printing settings go I can only really go through the basics like making suring you're selecting the right type of paper you're using in the printer settings and setting it to the highest quality. When you say you're getting varying results do you mean every time you print the same thing or when comparing it to what you see on screen? In terms of detailed advice I can't proclaim to be an expert but I do know that the recommendation is that you set Photoshop (or equivalent) to manage the colour management, making sure to turn colour management off in your printer settings. I have never found that this has done anything but its worth passing on consensus advice. Similarly it is usually suggested that you work with your images in CMYK mode as opposed to RGB when you're playing around with print media, but again in my experience that only serves to flummox Photoshop if and when I need to tweak the levels on the image. I tend to try doing an auto adjustment on the curves (in the adjustments tab of the image in Photoshop) as it generally brightens the image up a bit as I tend to find the colours are a lit bit darker than I was expecting but other than that I use the default settings. If you're asking about ICC or printer profiles or stuff like that then unfortunately I wouldn't be the best to give advice, although perhaps thats a worth subject for more research.
In my case I actually have better results on matte papers than glossy, "Matelina" is called I actually don't know if its regular matte paper or something else, but on that paper I can get really dark blacks, on the contrary, when printing on glossy papers I always get that "dark grey" instead of black and even its passable for a proxy its just not as good. I also like matte finish better since you can actually see the card from any angle when playing.
Thats interesting, I must admit colour production is still something I want to understand more about, the "why" things come out the way they do, there seems to be a lot of contradictory information out there on the web and not all paper is necessarily coated with the same material to give a gloss or matte finish. Perhaps Matelina is a particularly good finish for colour reproduction. I completely agree I have to have a matte finish to ensure I don't get horrible reflections but that's why I make sure I just use the matte laminate or gloss laminate if I'm know I'm going to be sleeving them with matte sleeves.
I would really suggest checking out the program MTGProxyPrinter for the photoshop-less like me, especially if you intend to make magic proxies- I've been using it for everything including print and play games though. You can set up your page size and then just choose the card width and height directly, as well as row and column spacing and export to pdf or print directly, and cards can just be dragged and dropped into the page you're currently on. It's free, just look it up
Just missed out at #26 😮 it was in the previous video, its a game I absolutely revere but if I'm honest just don't play enough...........logs on to jinteki.net........
1:29 - Correction. A Dwellings of Eldervale player may take a Regroup turn any turn. No need to place out all your Units first. Of course if you have no Units available to place on a turn, then you must Regroup. But, there can be strong advantages to Regrouping (taking several actions) vs placing a single Unit and doing a single action. Looks like this video has been out for a while, but input is better late than never. And, so many people continue to play and and share out about Dwellings of Eldervale that continued interest is high. More copies are coming available soon! Thanks, Dice vs Cards for this great introduction to Dwellings of Eldervale!
yep all input is welcome 😉 its funny I know I knew the rules as you've explained it when I said the words (even though its been a while since I've played it) back when making this video but its a reminder to be clear and literal at all times when explaining the game. I'll give this a pin as it might be helpful to viewers. Agreed though, great game, nice to see it have a good following.
The ARH guys do an incredible job, also @AzureDarth has done a great job with Encounters, in Spain we still have tournaments of this magnificent game, in my opinion the best Star Wars TCG game, with an incredible community of players.
I am very much in the same park as you, trying to create a great looking proxy. I did a ton of experimentation, and came down with the exact same method in the end - 180gsm glossy photo paper + matt laminate (we're even using the same brand laminate). However unfortunately I noticed a huge downside - when cards are against the window (I don't mean pressed, just that they have a light source behind them even without direct sunlight or on a cloudy day) the cards are semi-transparent. Depending on the colours of the image and card back, I can sometimes see the card name/art from the back and vice-versa (seeing the card back from the front). Have you found any solution to this issue? I tried experimenting with adding a full sheet adhesive paper as the back and it largely solves the transparency issue but it makes the card too thick and rigid (plus aligning the sticker paper is a PITA). They also become much more prone to deforming when bent, instead of springing back to their original shape.
This is an amzing video, can you please make a step by step guide for us to follow. Maybe just write it down somewhere and post a link in the description for us to follow. But then again, amazing video. Cheers
Excellent I'm glad you enjoyed it, so I'm doing a different video on the same topic thats uploading soon and then I promise next up is a step by step, onscreen guide.
Yes 180gsm double sided photo paper (200gsm would also work dependant on your availability) and its 3 mil, the term used in the USA, not 3mm for the laminate.
I have been down this rabbit hole before. There is a way to make them with just paper. But be warned you need to buy a "canon pixma pro 200" or better because the first one i bought couldn't handle it The paper when you buy it Has a warning but i cannot for the life of me find where to find The printer specs for cardstock weight limt. I'm excited to try your way. Thanks
I'm glad you like the guide and are going to give it a go. You can absolutely make them with just paper but if you want roughly the same thickness as the real thing you're never gonna get the same tautness when bending and flexing the card, to look at in a sleeve will be great so if you want to save some time and are aware of what you'll be missing out on then its definitely worth a look. To your point there is no hard and fast rule with these printers in my experience, I always use the rear feed on my printer one at a time, most manufacturers refer to it as something like "specialty media" that can accommodate a higher GSM, which is why it tends to always be a photo printer that you'll need.
I used the exact same laminate pouches as you and the result leaves much to be desired - colours on the cards are too dim. The best solution would be to use semi-gloss pouches but they unfortunately don't exist ;/
Sorry it didn't come out the way you'd hoped, I assume you mean using the matte pouches? I would say they have the same affect on the vibrancy and colour of the card as matte sleeves do so it just depends if going gloss would be any better. Semi-gloss pouches would be an absolute must, like you say if they were readily available anywhere.
Well at least its a rarity but I can only pontificate on so many of the same games year after year, at least there's some visual commentary so its not completely soulless.
Great video! I've been meaning to ask, for the card fronts, did you cut them from the PDF? Or got them from another source? It's my first time using Photoshop and I'm struggling to get those spaces between cards.
I'm assuming you mean the Netrunner ones? I can't remember 100%, I try and avoid extracting from PDFs as you lose some quality but if they didn't provide it in another source then thats probably what I did. You can do this yourself in Photoshop by opening the PDF as a file and selecting the appropriate images.
Using this method, foil gets a little off during cutting and rounding the edges. I'm using the same corner puncher, but maybe I need a sharper paper cutter?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean when you say the "foil gets a little off" but certainly the sharper the cutter the less likely the laminate will will experience friction and/or similar problems. Also make sure the laminator is as hot as it can get and if necessary do two runs through to ensure the three layers are as bonded together as possible.
@@DicevsCards I meant that during cutting (and I'm using Kadomaru pro corner rounder and Fiskars 5446 paper trimmer, so IDK if it I can get anything sharper), about 1mm of foil gets disconnected from the paper so it gets visibly more matte on the edges. I will try with 2 passes through the laminator. Previously I run it only once, but it was very hot (running for like 15 minutes before use). It's Tracer A3 laminator, supposedly a little above the Amazon Essentials one.
Thanks for the video, very helpful. Wish there was a cost breakdown, so we knew if this was actually cheaper than ordering proxies from a printing company.
Ultimately I didn't trust that I could adequately predict the cost of ink dependant on what printer you have and where in the world you are. The costs that are more predictable are of course the laminating sheets and the paper, which if you're using A4/US letter size will fit 9 cards on per sheet. Honestly I wouldn't have even felt confident in giving a range cost for the ink so your mileage may vary. There is also the assumption that you could you use a home/office grade printer that can print on specialty media that you probably have access to anyway for your personal needs, but maybe I can do research in the future to try and nail down some indicative costs. Ultimately if you're on the fence and the shipping costs for a printing company aren't exorbitatant then thats always a viable option (and of course comes with the least in the way of trial & error obstacles) but if you want more control of what you're doing and what you need then this may be the way to go.
@@DicevsCards It seems that it will cost around EUR 242.28 before printing. (including if you're getting a legit monthly subscription from photoshop for just the 1 month).
If there was I would be a extremely happy camper. A satin laminate would be at the top of my list for upgrading this process assuming I wanted to play with them unsleeved of course. If you're sleeving then there's no real need. Just FYI if you are searching there are many, many terms used for this type of finish alongside satin, you've also got semi-gloss, lustre, silk, pearl and so on. If you do find some please do post about it here 😉
@@DicevsCards of the things I've found people talk about Mod Podge Clear Acrylic Sealer Matte on forms. maybe you could try that? Other than that not a lot of specifics I saw other than acrylic sprays or wood working stuff which should work on paper
Grettings from chile, and thanks for the video its really amazing you create de Grial of proxys :) so i have a cuestion, when you say a laminate bag from 150 microns its a laminate from hot or cold ??? Because i try with a hot laminate and its does not work :(
Greetings to you, I am glad you liked the video, I'm sorry the hot laminate did not work, did you ensure that the laminator was as hot as it can be and that the sheets were suitable for heating? I have never used cold lamination as I can't see how it could possibly bind the materials together as well as a heat press but I've been wrong before.
Decipher was my favorite game company that ever existed. They had a penchant for ridiculously overcomplicated rules that somehow still worked perfectly well and made total sense (the closest comparison I can think of is DnD). I got super involved in their final game, Fight Klub, which was sadly what put them under. I have more LotR TCG and Star Trek CCG (another of their incredible games) cards than I know what to do with... and I've never found anyone to play with.
Yeah I was a big fan of Decipher, they were foremost in my mind when it came to CCGs in that period and as an extension to your point they didn't just lazily take advantage of the fact that they had three hugely popular IP's to play with. I remember Fight Klub feeling like the last hurrah, alas I never followed it that much but still bad luck can't rid of us these wonderful games as each have a continuing committee keeping them alive.
@@DicevsCards FK was such an odd duck. I had a strong feeling it was doomed from the start, and it certainly was, but it was still fun to be a part of the ride. I wish there were a way to reprint their old games. Star Trek, Star Wars, LotR, the holy trinity of excellent card games, imho.
it can still be used as any energy type but in the rare instance that a card references a printed type of resource then only the specific resource mentioned can be used.
If anyone is still thinking of getting into this game, its a fantastic TCG now. With the implementation of new card types such as locations which act as defensive cards. I could not recommend this game enough now.
