I had an aesthetic question for all of you. Because the promo cards are basically no longer available, how have you made them for your table? I mean, it's easy enough to print the image out on a piece of paper, maybe cut it out, and slap it down to play, but that lacks a certain aesthetic sense. On the other hand, I've read tutorials over on BGG about making custom cards, talking about laser printers and heat lamps and using xactos to cut cards...and I just don't have the time or skill for that.
So: how have YOU done it at your table? I'm curious.
For those of us who sleeve our cards, it's pretty simple. Just sleeve a regular card that you don't use (a M:tG Plains, for instance) and put the promo print out in the sleeve as well. Feels like a real card and, though it is noticibly, though not egregiously, different from the actual cards, since you're not putting it in the deck, it's not as much of an issue.
For non-sleevers, well, print out on card stock, I guess?
I print out on photo paper, cut them out, then depending on the thickness, glue a sheet of paper or cardstock between the 2 sides, then i take a black marker around the edge and cover up any white spots, makes the card look cleaner. Though for customs and playtest character cards I just use photo paper and a clear sleeve. Also with the sleeves, since you need 2 sides for character cards i just leave out the MtG card or whatever in between, the thickness of 2 pieces of photo paper and the sleeve make it just fine, especially since it doesn't go into a deck, though this can depend on the sleeve.
Yup. I do exactly what Koga said. I sleeve my cards too so I just glue the two sides together and it's usually thick enough. I use semi-gloss paper to mimic the card surface as closely as possible.
I recently got an original Young Legacy from a charity and since that one is from the First Edition print run it is a bit thinner than all subsequent cards, so I actually still use my printed copy in games.
Not helpful, McBehrer… Some people haven't been lucky enough to get their hands on the harder-to-find promos - no need to rub it in.
If it helps, because the promo cards are character cards, you really don't have to worry about how it looks, as you won't be shuffling it or anything. You can just print it on anything you want. For the new cards that are coming with Shattered Timelines, that's what I've done - I just printed the images provided on cardstock and dropped them in the box with the other character cards. When we want to use the alternate character, we just pull it out and use it.
I use the oversized hero hp trackers on my site. Since they're oversized, there's no expectation that they'll look like a regular card, so being printed on a home printer on card stock isn't an issue.
I made use of the recent Artscow sales to get mine. At roughly $8 for a fully customised deck of 54 cards including delivery it was well worth it as I could get a couple of pnp games done at the same time. So, effectively, it cost me nothing as I was thinking about getting a couple of decks printed anyway. The quality is every bit as good as the rest of SotM although the Artscow cards are fractionally larger. As these are only the character cards it doesn't matter.
Printed them on card stock. I borrowed the images on Spiff's side for the backs of Ra and Fanatic since the ones on BGG are really low resolution compared to the front.
Thanks for the help and ideas, everyone! I grabbed all the images from BGG, using the largest ones possible, put them into a Word doc, and resized them to 3.45" high. I took the file to Staples and had them print them in color on 50 lb glossy paper. They came out great. Now I'm going to cut them and sleeve them, possible putting an old MtG card in if they don't seem sturdy enough. Anyway, this allowed me to get all 15 promo cards for less than 5 bucks. If anyone wants my 7 MB Word doc to do this themselves, just shoot me a PM.
Some people haven't been lucky enough to get their hands on the harder-to-find promos - no need to rub it in.