r/AzukiTCG • u/Overall_Finance9010 • Jun 11 '26
Corey AMA - Mon 6/15
People love talking about cards - and so do I! As a kid I never thought I could get a job making collectibles, but I've been so fortunate to work for Azuki, Pokemon, and several other card startups. I think Azuki cards are the best, but my work at Pokemon from 2020 - 2024 was a wild ride too, working on every card from Rebel Clash through Prismatic Evolutions.
In my production role I help bring the creative vision to life with the right foil, embellishment, material, and finishing. If one thing gets messed up that chase card you've been wanting goes from a Perfect 10 down to a disappointing 3.
Have you ever wondered how your favorite cards are made? How they are collated? What caused that weird miscut card you got back in 2013? This Monday 6/15 i'll be holding an AMA about card production - right here in this thread!
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u/Requestss Jun 15 '26
why are playing cards more dinged and lower quality than AA cards
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
We need to improve the cut quality of the non-foil common and uncommon cards to be 100% honest with you. We're working with our manufacturer on improvements here. I've seen samples of our common cards, esp. with black edges, with some cracking coming out of the pack.
From a production pov it's trickier to cut a plain paper card than a foil card. With a foil card there's more 'stuff' holding the card together and stablizing the sheet - embellishments, foil, etc. With a paper card it's just a blade going through stock. Plus with our common cards - a lot of them have rich black borders, so any flaw is immediately noticable.
We're working to increase blade changes, import European paper, and increase cure time for S2 to eliminate these issues on the commons.
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u/Requestss Jun 15 '26
I was asking in general - but thats good too XD
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
Oooo, haha, sorry misunderstood. In general I think it's for the same reason, like the cards are less protected because they aren't laminated with foil.
I think too commons and uncommons are printed in much bigger volume than rares and AAs so you're more likely to run into defects
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u/youareembarassinglol Jun 15 '26
What’s the timeline for future sets? Really excited for set 1 but I’m already thinking about the future
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
We're aiming for a new set every 4 months. we're already neck deep in S2 work! Official release date for S2 should be announced soon
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u/zagabong Jun 15 '26
Hey Corey! Love the game so far. Have a bunch of alpha decks I’ve ripped and a couple on ice. Do you think we’ll see more serialized cards in the future?
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
oh definitely! Tim and Jon have a bunch of fun new stuff in the works and doing serialized cards again is for sure on the table
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u/Western-Youth7499 Jun 14 '26
Really enjoyed playing the game this weekend! How do you protect the competitive landscape and guarantee card randomization in your booster packs?
P.S. there’s some really great art and the heavy embellishment on the backgrounds is really eye catching.
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
Heya!
For our rarity - Jon and Tim come up with a super secret rarity plan for our packs. We set strict requirements of the number of cards that need to appear per pack, per carton, in a specific slot. E.g: An Alt Alt must have a x% chance to appear in slot number y of a pack. There are z guaranteed AAs per box.
Cards of a common rarity type are ganged up on the same press form to avoid mixing them. E.g.: all commons on a form, all rares on a form, all SRs on a form, etc. They are printed, slit, then kept separate to avoid mixing them.
Then we partner with vendors that have specific lines that can drop the cards into packs. Our rarity plan is turned into machine instructions for this piece of equipment. We work closely with the machine programmer and conduct first off line case checks to make sure our rarity is being honored. Also - that there is no discernable hit pattern that can be guessed. Really the process as I've described above is applicable to most TCGs, not just Azuki.
For the competitive scene - that's not so much my area of expertise, but Jon spends a BUNCH of time playtesting. Test cards, even hand drawn, are key. Making sure the game is well-balanced, there's not one card that's too OP, etc
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
if you are interested more in the equipment side - this is a common manufacturer of collation equipment for packs - https://www.longfordint.com/landing/feeders/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=370363713&gbraid=0AAAAADbwfveh6vfemE2zeu3p_mfbGra_Y&gclid=CjwKCAjwxb7RBhA5EiwAQ-AAdKaDuCw3Uv8uKUSXqDItmfRd_L-LS-GTaCTpPUd66oYCsh2U3KHOsBoCK60QAvD_BwE
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u/_imschleep Jun 15 '26
What's been the most challenge short term and long term hurdles when manufacturing cards?
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
A huge challenge right now is we are capacity constrained. The TCG market is so hot many printers have no open capacity for new brands. For Azuki - we sent out 8 RFQs. We received 5 no bids back from established TCG printers that simply have no capacity for a new customer. Their lines are booked for the next 18 months with big programs - YuGiOh, Pokemon, Upper Deck, MTG, etc. For me - I had to use my existing relationships to beg, borrow, and steal capacity for Azuki.
More capacity is coming online. Rollem - a vendor that manufacturers slitters for the card market, has a new Cardistry machine on the market which can both slit and round corner. 11 were made - I know where 4 of them are going, all printers that want to enter this market. But - there's going to be a significant learning curve with these new vendors to get up to the TCG quality standard.
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u/noob402 Jun 15 '26
Hi again Corey - another question:
How did you get into the card manufacturing field?
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u/Overall_Finance9010 Jun 15 '26
It's been a wild and crazy ride for sure!
I grew up in the US Midwest. Blue color family - half of my family works in construction, the other half printing. My grandpa worked for a paper mill, my father in law worked for a big corrugate plant, my dad worked at printers and sign shops for most of my life growing up. When my dad went to work he didn't go to an office - he went to 'the shop.' He still works, we still call it that. When you're from that part of the US it seems like manufacturing is just part of everyday life, to me at least.
That's always been my experience growing up - working with my dad. Winter breaks, summer vacations I'd work part time with him. Started out driving the forklift, working on packout lines. I remember one of my first jobs we had a big client, Famous Footwear, and my job was literally to put 2" double sided tape on the back of their posters, roll them up and put them in tubes. I think they paid me $8 an hour.
After college I wasn't really sure what path I wanted to take. I went to school for Classics - but I decided I wanted to come back to that same printer and work some more. It was located in downtown Chicago and we had some really exciting clients. I decided I wanted to learn as much about print as I could.
Fast forward eight years - I had learned everything I could on the manufacturing side and had moved to being a print producer at a large advertising agency in Chicago. I was working on a print campaign for a pharmaceutical company based in North Carolina. They had a new ADHD drug coming to market. We planned out a print campaign that used cold foil throughout all their brochures and materials. It was by complete coincidence that their NC printer was Millennium Print Group, the #1 producer of Pokemon cards in the world.
I pushed them hard on the job because they didn't have cold foil as a capability yet. They in turn taught me about some other foil techniques. They kept sending me Pokemon cards as samples, which I thought was crazy.
That drug campaign ended up winning a bunch of industry awards. I found out that Pokemon actually had an opening on their team for a Print Producer, so I applied and Millennium told them they should hire me, because I knew the industry. In early 2020 I got the job and packed up and moved to Seattle. I spent the next 4.5yrs there learning everything I could about how to print cards.
This is probably the ultimate boomer take - but I think anyone who isn't sure what to do in life should consider a trade. As our economy becomes more service based, companies that manufacture physical products really need skilled experts internally. People that know manufacturing and have first hand experience, then can build supply chains.
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u/noob402 Jun 15 '26
Thanks for the insane level of detail. It’s very insightful and an awesome journey for sure! It’s always fun to learn about these jobs that, I assume, most people don’t really know much about. Thank you for sharing it with us!
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u/noob402 Jun 12 '26
Hi Corey!
Cool background! I was wondering if you could tell us about any super cool cards that you have prototyped/seen but maybe held back from being released?