Manufacturing cardboard counters

[MatrixGamer]

I'd like to hear people's experiences with making cardboard counters.

I'm move Engle Matrix Games into a folio format. The game comes in a hardback cover (color and glossy) with a fold out laminated map on the inside, a rules book pasted in and a plastic bag of counters.

I'm thinking of printing the counters on my color copier, pasting the sheet to a sheet of binders board, probably spray varnishing them, and after stacking the boards, using a guillotine paper cutter to cut out stacks. The counters will effectively be pre sorted into sets as they are cut. I'll just need to bag them as I go. I figure I can get 80 counters per 8.5x11 sheet.

I'll probably paste with either yes paste or maybe a pressure adhesive (Daige makes one that has a hand applicator costing around $25). I wish there was a better way to do the varnishing but spray varnish is still cheaper than lamination film. Has anyone tried out silk screening a clear coating on sheets?

I'm real keen on using binderboard for the counters because it makes for very thick pieces - Like the old Battle Line games in the 70's (Machiavelli, Flat Top, etc.) I think that will add to precieved value.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'm interested to see what other thoughts people have.

[Andrew Cooper]

I'd like to second MatrixGamer's interest.  I'd love to hear how anyone as done counters as I'm considering doing something that requires them and I haven't really been able to figure out what my options are at this point.

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

Have you contacted any local printers in your area to ask them about such a task? I suspect that most (non-specialty) printers that can print and cut business cards could print and cut game counters.

David

[MatrixGamer]

I guess for me the challenge isn't the printing or the cutting (the local printer would have the same equipment I have - except theirs is probably electric as opposed to hand operated). The next technical question is attaching the counter sheets to card board, and how to make the counters shiny.

Counter die cutters are something I know little about - and given that they are very expensive - not something I need to get into. If 1 sheet produces 80 of one type of counter and we would call a game a hit if it sold 100 units, then 2 sheets of counters per type is all that is needed.

The challenge is to make something that looks good. I believe that it is possible for us to make games locally that are equal to what is produced by a specialty printer. It is all a matter of technique and experience. (Or at least I hope it is...)

Chris Engle

[guildofblades]

Well, being partially a board wargame publisher, we've done counter like game pieces a number of different ways now.

One, for our cheap format games, we merely printed units in black and white on a 13 point index stock through our digital duplicator. Players could easily cut these out, but even on index they weren't very thick and being a single color on a white stock looked very desk top publishing in quality.

For our more expensive games we had previously ordered these little round plastic chips (twiddly winks) a million at a time to drive our price down to less than 1/3 a penny each. Then we had custom label sheets cut out with 108 blank pre cut circles on them that could be applied to the plastic chips (we called plastic tokens...it just sounded better). The pieces were niced and thick enough to handle, but with the printer we had it wasn't cost effective to do it in color, so everyting was still printed B&W. We now have a printer with refillable ink that would lower that printing the stickers in color would work for us, but we have moved away this production method due to the time involvement. Both printing of the stickers and the sort/counting of tokens for packaging in boxes was too time consuming to allow us to be truly effecient with our packaging efforts.

Now, a "traditional" wargame counter is .5" x .5" and is on a 60 point chipboard stock (about the same chipboard thickness as most hard cover books). There is not a printer in the world that I know of that can print on chip that thick. So sheets must be printed on a thinner text weight stock, adhered to the chip stock, then die cut one at a time. The slowness of the die cutting is where the real cost comes in, since .60 chip is generally too thick to go through any roll press,  sheets generally have to be put up on a die cutter thats more like a stamper, and cut single (or maybe double). Thats a lot of labor. But you HAVE to have a chipboard that is that thick die cut for the players because its just too think to cut out with scissors, leaving players with a good old exacto knife as the only means to cut out the units. If you ask players to exacto out a hundred or more units, they won't be buying more of your games. Trust me. We used to get complaints about merely having to apply pre cut labels to the blank tokens. Oh, and ballpark figured I have heard to have this sort of counter sheet made were $1 per sheet.

We've gone an alternative route for counter production. We now use two different methods, one in house and one we outsource.

For in house, low quantity counters, we buy full 8 1/2" x 11" label sheets. In quantity we get these at $.08 per sheet. These are laser labels and may be run through our color copier, so we  can do a run of them pretty quickly. Copy costs run about $.02 per sheet. Then we have in stock blank chipboards at .22 chip thickness. These we use as the game counters for our $10 and under games. The player simply adheres the sticker sheet to the chip and then can cut out the units with scissors. Much thicker than ..22 chip and I doubt scissors would work.

For more professional counters, we've outsourced production to a box manufacturer. Manufacturers of paperboxes can typically print on chipboard thicknesses of up to .28 or .30 chip. And they can make custom cutting dies that can also work on roll cutters, so they can die cut a production run fairly easily too. To make our counters a bit easier to work with we made them larger (.625" by .9"),  but due to how they were laid out we still get 136 counters to a 8 1/2" x 11" sheet. To get the pricing we wanted we had to print up basically 8 different sheets at a 2,000 print run, but we got professionally printed counters that were die cut for the price of $.20 per sheet. Now the nature of the game units in our games, we could use multiple copies of the same sheet for most games, so most games use between 5 and 8 copies. Those 8 1/2" x 11" sheets were set up in quarters that we can easily chop down with our own cutter, so in many cases only 1 quarter of a sheet was for a single game, so in printing 8 sheets we actually printed the counters for 21 different games at once. So $3,200 for different games worth of counters. Inventory per game being between 500 and 266, which is an acceptible amount of inventory for us to stock at one time.

We've worked out a deal with that printer that if we double up the number of sheets we'll print (so 16 instead of 8), we'll get the next print run at the same price, but only have to print 1,000 quantity, which brings our restock inventory levels down to as low as a paltry 133 units.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com

[guildofblades]

>>Counter die cutters are something I know little about - and given that they are very expensive - not something I need to get into.<<

We had considered the option of printing counters on labels and adhering them to a .60 or .80 chip, then doing die cutting ourselves. The best we could come up with was to have a custom die made at a local die maker (cost anywhere from about $200 to $1,000) and have that die backing made so we could attach it to a drill press. Then we could simply use the drill press to die cut counter sheets one at a time. I'm still not sure we won't try that sometime in the future, but the labor side of it make me leery.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com

[MatrixGamer]

What I have in mind is to use the paper cutter I have to cut the counters out. I have a 26" cutter, that goes through chip board (which is what binders board is). The cutter has a crank that allows me to move the stack of board forward 1" at a time to cut, so I can cut strips of counters out and set them aside. Then I can put the stack of strips in the cutter and cut off a stack of counters with each pass. As I said I'll just pop them in a bag right then so sorting won't be needed. This will be some labor but I don't think too much.

Ryan - Do you use your color copier to print counter sheets? If so what do you do to coat them so the dry ink doesn't rub off?

I wonder if there is a clear coating for digital duplicators. They effectively work like silk screening. A clear coat could be put on that way pretty easily.

Chris Engle

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

Great details about the counters, Ryan.

Another quick idea, out of left field but inspired by Chris's question about clear coat: lamination.

Couldn't you do color printouts, laminate the sheet (good lamination, not the "overlay" type, but the type that actual bonds to both sides of the paper), and then cut them? You'd get durability of colors and thickness from that, right? ...And you'd get a knock-on benefit of water-resistance, except at the tile edges.

(I also thought of doing something with custom-ordered floor tile, but that's just plain rope smokin'.)

HTH;
David

[guildofblades]

>>Ryan - Do you use your color copier to print counter sheets? If so what do you do to coat them so the dry ink doesn't rub off?<<

Hi Chris,

Nope, no coating. The counters we have printed professionally have a flood varnish coating.

The laser label stock is specifically designed for use in copiers, so the toner adheres pretty well and they are semi glossy, so somewhat water resilient. But no, no real coating for those units. Thats why that style of counter is being reserved primarily for our Compact Games that retail for only $7.95. The customer is already getting a full color boxed board game with color maps and full color units with chipboard, dice,rules and all for that price. No one else on the market comes close to that price for fully packaged board games, so if they aren't designed to survive hundreds of plays over a decade or two, we still deem that we;ve provided good bang for the buck.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com

[guildofblades]

Hi David,

>>Couldn't you do color printouts, laminate the sheet (good lamination, not the "overlay" type, but the type that actual bonds to both sides of the paper), and then cut them? You'd get durability of colors and thickness from that, right? ...And you'd get a knock-on benefit of water-resistance, except at the tile edges.<<

Well, yes, you could simply laminate full color sheets to arrive at playing counters. But you would need a very thick lamination to give the counter a thickness suitable enough to be a playing counter of any real use. Thats a viable production option, but it requires a much higher quality laminator than we currently own. Also, lamination of that kind costs an aweful lot more than thin lamination. And when you are done you won't have a counter as thick as one that was mounted onto some kind of chipboard. But they would have the added benefit of being near water proof.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com

[MatrixGamer]

Dave

I've done the laminated counter route and find I don't like the thinness of the result. The counters are hard to pick up. My fear is that going this way will make for a cheaper looking game. I'm just guessing here but I think players will dismiss them.

Here is where my self esteem issues come in. I've lived out in the world of amatuer game making for a long time and am ready to do it better. A laminated couter that is glued to cardboard looks fine but is cost prohibitive due to labor. Laminating coutners on one side and pasting them down is a possibility but isn't cheap and unless the film is tightly down lamination can peel off.

I looked at liquid lamination but on talking with the company found that it is not intended for paper - it is used on outdoor signs. That leaves spray varish, silk screening a clear acrylic ink, film laminating, or doing nothing.

Hey! I wonder if an old memiograph machine might be useable to print the clear acrylic ink? It would have to be washed thoroughly after each use but it would be a machine and thus fast.

Chris Engle

[Veritas Games]

The EPSON 10600 prints on 1.5 mm cardboard.  That's probably more than thick enough for counters.  That would allow you to print directly on to the counter stock.

You would likely want to spray coat the sheets to protect them.  But this may not be a bad option.