How much you value your own time is definitely a factor. I've cut out more printed cards than I can remember for GSF and Sentinels through playtesting. But cutting out, sleeving (with proxy cards you also need laying around or to purchase), and disposing of the paper waste can take a decent amount of time. And new builds? Those are intense, since not every single card is changed. You have to hunt around for the cards you need and swap out the old version for the new. It's not much of a big deal if you can stream a show or podcast, listen to some music, or have good company. But if you're without? It's a long process.
This isn't a criticism or complaint, but I have a bit of experience with "proxy" Sentinels cards. I can say for sure that they're quite functional without the bells and whistles of a proper set, but I'll take the proper set every time.
I'd do it in a heartbeat for cards I couldn't get other ways (I have a decent number of hand written decks that I'm playtesting), but I'd rather pay $20 more than spend hours formatting cards, printing them, then cutting them out and carding/sleeving them.
People are printing tosx's custom decks from BGG (the ones with art that is close to Adam's style) on Artscow and other sites for $10-$15 each. If the full text and art of every card were made available online, there will certainly be people with the time and inclination to put together files for each deck in the game and share them, allowing people to print out whichever deck they want. If something is possible on the Internet, then someone will do it.
However, I think I agree that it's not much of an issue. How many people will pay $10 for a single deck when they could buy the entire game for only 4x that amount? And someone who's willing (or poor enough) to play with black and white printed or even scribbled out rules in sleeves is probably not going to be a regular customer anyway.
Oh yes, I totally agree. I don't see copying making any kind of dent in sales of the actual game. Few people enjoy all the tedious work involved in proxying, and as has been said, the game's cheap enough.
I was mostly just debating against Paul's point that the cost-effective way to get the game is to buy a legit copy. I'm just saying that if you don't care about the art, the most cost effective way is to print your own text-based cards. It wouldn't be the full game experience without the art, but it'd work.
Meaning that When I go to update the wiki 'Deck Lists' (such on Absolute zero's page) it will be far easier to copy and paste the information rather than searching through and typing them up again. You'll notice those deck lists only have the name of the card, brief description of the artwork, and who the quote is attributed to - nothing else.
And given that I wrote the 'dont this' for the wiki front page, I think I know what not to do
Vassal is a program that lets you play board games with people on other computers, live or by email.
A Vassal Module is the file that contains all the data about the particular game you are playing, pictures for the cards, the map, a die roller etc. There is a Sentinels module that was endorsed by >G that contains only 2 villains, 6 heroes and 2 environments from the original printed edition.
It can be found here if you want to take a look (and Vassal is found here )
That sounds cool. I have relatives that live out of state that I would love to play Sentinels with! Do you have to make sure you're not breaking the rules or will the game itself police you, kinda like the Dominion online version does?
No rules implimentation, everything has to be done manually. This particular module is basically just jpgs of the cards and a place to play them, there are a lot more complex modules (for other games) out there, I have looked into it but have no clue how to make anything beyond the basics.
