I've always liked producing cards for miniature games, hacking around in Powerpoint or Excel to get something looking half-decent. Earlier this year, I discovered nanDECK, free Windows software written for game inventors, with the aim of speeding up the process of designing and printing deck of cards. And of course, game players can use it to create cards for existing games.
It's a very powerful tool with an excellent manual and active forum on BoardGameGeek. The software has both a visual editor and a scripting language (like HTML). A lot can be achieved with the former (and it was a good place to start to learn about the scripting) but the latter provides more features and flexibility.
I'd originally started designing cards for Ronin, the Japanese skirmish game, shortly before lockdown. When I had finished them, I found that the UK company I planned to use for professional printing had paused operations and a few months later, their website sadly disappeared so unfortunately they look like a casualty of the pandemic.
Another company highly recommended on BoardGameGeek was The Game Crafter. This US company caters for all aspects of board game production - boards, tiles, counters, cards, etc - and has a very slick website for managing your designs and images. Since I was now shipping from the US, I decided to make a load of cards for Legends of the Old West and some for Perilous Tales too, and place a bigger order. They are very strict on printing anything you don't have the copyright for. That wouldn't normally be a problem for a printer when it's for your own personal use but the endgame of Game Crafter is that people can then order your completed game direct from the website, paying for the printing with a cut going to the game designer. So even if you don't plan to sell your work, they won't print it. I had originally planned to use the cover of the rulebooks as the back of my cards. But instead I designed my own with some free-to-use Shutterstock images.
The cards arrived yesterday and I'm so pleased with them. Nice to see my designs on cards professionally printed and cut, rather than on pieces of card that start to curl and stick together!
I now have 51 cards for Ronin:
