Smurf along with me: la la la-la la la!

[japes]

Originally Posted by Xorlof

@dok --yeah, there are better choices for cards to drop. I saw Retiarius played at the last Gencon, by a good player! 'course he was just using the mini as a proxy for Sparty.

@japes --that's good to know. I was hoping you would be able to figure that out for us!

Japes and I have been talking privately about trialing various printing company with test prints. I'm just getting around to making the test cards. There are lots of things we could test:
- printing resolution;
- CMYK and RGB color rendition, gamut, evenness, consistency, toner aligment;
- cut size including corners, overall dimensions, consistency;
- print durability including scratch/scuffability, edge chipping;
- cardstock quality including bend test, thickness, opacity, gloss/finish;
- speed of service;
- centering, both on a card and alignment of front-to-back;
- a copyright, trademark check (will the printing company print something with a Marvel logo or Spiderman image);
- text legibility at a variety of sizes;
- image printed at proper size;
- handing characteristics--ease to get dirty, clean, water resistance, ripping, shuffling;
- and general impressions of test prints of sample cards.

I'm surprised there isn't any good BGG post comparing the various companies using test prints designed to tease out differences. Not all of these are as important for 'scape cards, but I want to test the things that are (and will probably use Bicycle playing cards as a reference in the comparison).

I've narrowed the potential companies down to:
- ArtsCow/CowCow (same company),
- PrintPlayGames/AdMagic (same company),
- SuperiorPOD,
- MakePlayingCards/PrinterStudio (same company),
- The Game Crafter (I can save on shipping), and
- DriveThruCards

If anyone has others they think should be added to the list, please let me know this week. I'm going to send test files out next week for printing.

I'm really hoping DriveThruCards has quality prints and cardstock because their pricing and ability to have them fulfill orders on demand would be great. (Unfortunately they don't offer a linen finish, which I'd like, but oh well...) If it weren't so expensive, MakePlayingCards/PrinterStudio looks to have the best options for cardstock (spec-wise) including plastic cards (!).

If DriveThruCards does deliver quality results (plenty of BGG users say they do), we can get bulk orders of all 218 cards (no cards need to be left out) to people for under $20 and one-off, on-demand orders could be fulfilled for under $25 (shipping included). And a bulk buy of all 650ish C3G cards could come to people's doors for less than fifty bucks!

I haven't finalized the test files, but in addition to having sample cards in both Japes'/JAB's design and the Smurfy design, they'll have strange cards such as the following (lots of bleed on these images):



(The background on many of these cards is transparent--which may have different colors on your screen depending on the site style you have active. It'll be white when printed.) These cards aren't finalized, particularly the last one that I just started on, so let me know if there are things you think I should add.

Anyway, consider the above a request to let me know what you know about card printing companies!

If we've talked about this already I apologize but I was curious if you got the test prints back? If so how was the DriveThruCards quality and did they print the Marvel stuff?