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The Game Crafter now makes linen cards and components!

The Game Crafter - Linen cards, boxes, and boards are now available!

The Game Crafter is pleased to announce that LINEN is here! For the past year, linen cards have been the number one idea in the ideas system. We’re pleased to announce that we now have linen finished cards. But why stop at cards?

When you enable linen finish on your game, everything from your cards to your box to your game board will get our professional linen finish! And you can do it with or without UV coating, but UV coating really makes it pop. Just go to “edit details” in your game and you can enable linen finish for $0.25 per sheet.

Comments

Not sure why there isn't more excitement here!

This is a huge step for all those designers using TGC as their primary production house! Great news!

Thanks!

Thanks Rich! We're excited to knock off another long time #1 community request. It's great to have community-led product development because we know exactly what game designers want. :)

We think the UV coating + Linen finish is going to be a game changer! PAX South Attendees got to see our new UV coated cards and every single person that compared them to our regular 305gsm card stock chose the UV coated cards. Linen will take this one step further for many designers.

Exciting times for print on demand board game designers!

Concur with Rich

Rich,

I'm often perplexed by the lack of general enthusiasm on this site which is comprised ostensibly of Board Game Designers. This is very big news and hopefully propels designers to consider a U.S.-based company for their games, as they haven't during the past 20 years with any great frequency due to the associated cost factors. As long as China continues to undercut us, we'll lose any market share in this part of the industry.

TGC,

Congratulations! This is exceptionally good news for both you and the community of designers you directly (and indirectly) support!

Cheers,
Joe

Fresh designers ≠ know what to be excited about?

Joe, I'm pretty sure a lot of the active users are quite new to game design in general, and perhaps they don't yet know they *should* be excited by this. Perhaps this is a space to add How-To guides (top menu bar) on selecting card finishes and material.

Great point!

Rich,

The site is fantastic, but can always use some organizational features for the new (or even veteran) designers to find what they need, vice culling through thousands of posts.

Cheers,
Joe

Card Finishes

Ok, I admit to not knowing what the "UV Finish" and the "Linen Finish" are. Can somebody explain, or point to existing games which use these finishes?

Regards,
kos

linen and UV

Hi Kos,

linen finish cards are the ones you'll find in "high end" games. They have an almost threaded quality to them. Here's a close up with a bit of light shining to show you the texture:

As for UV coating, this is a higher gloss coating:

Totally agree

Way to go, TGC! This is definitely a step up in quality both for you and the game designers who use your tools. Demo-ing games that have a linen finish makes an immense tactile difference for playtesters in terms of their first impression.

Unpub comes up this Spring...I'll be submitting some designs by then for sure. :)

That's the kinda excitement we like to see! :)

Thank you for the kind words everyone. Really glad to hear you're excited about these new features.

The UV coating finish we use isn't nearly as glossy as the example provided above, but it does make the card more durable, nicer to shuffle, and dry erasable!

If you'd like to learn more about UV Coating and how it works at The Game Crafter, check out this story on our news blog: http://news.thegamecrafter.com/post/137560589243/mix-n-match-chits-dry-erase-and-frickin-laser"

If you'd like to see photos of our new Linen products, you can see them on our news blog at http://news.thegamecrafter.com/post/138614132049/hip-hip-hooray-linen-is-here-for-the-past-year

Our UV Coating and Linen features are completely optional. You can edit your game and enable one or both for your entire game. We think that using the UV Coating + Linen is wonderful.

(also, we were down at PAX South and showed the UV Coated cardstock to hundreds, if not over a thousand, people. And every single person picked the UV Coated cardstock over the regular non coated card stock.

UV coating

Yeah, that example UV glass is a bit much, but the other images I saw were all either Spot UV or barely noticeable. I look forward to seeing the difference in person!

As a question that I'd need to know before then, in regards to the dry-erase on the UV coating.
How does that pair well with the linen - as in, do dry erase marks stick a bit better with or without the linen part?

Yep, it's fine

Yeah the dry erase on the UV+Linen stock is totally fine and not an issue. We've tried this ourselves to see how it would work too. :)

Perfect

Good to hear, expect some orders of that. I've been holding off on a prototype specifically because of dry erase! Okay, that and oversized foam dice.

Very Pleased

I received a card game prototype of mine just two days ago. After last night's playtesting, it's safe to say the UV coating and linen finish are a hit! Well done, TGC! This definitely helps a player - or publisher - visualize the finished, mass-produced product much easier. It's great to hold the cards I designed in my hands with them looking so polished and professional.

I'll be sure to stop by during Unpub to see what else you all have in development.

Wow!

I had been looking around for other places to publish my prototype, but now, with these features added, I'm much more excited to try prototyping with these, TCG. Very good job!

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