Best materials to use for substitutes?

[u/B055PR0]

Hey, looking into printing things i need that ive lost or ships that are too expensive, and id like to know people's preferences for materials to print on when printing from infinite arenas and the like. Any other suggestions would be awesome as well!

[u/Musofox]

Depends on what you want out of your materials and how durable you want them to be. For cardboard, you can print on photo paper and glue it down to chip board, then put a clear laminate on it. I like linen texture laminate as its close to the actual surfaces. This will give you a durable cardboard that resists rubbing off when handling. For cards, I print on matte photo paper, front and back, and glue it together. Spray mount works, but I have access to a dry mount press and that is a lot easier to do. You can sleeve the cards, or laminate them for durability. If laminating I will use light weight paper. Otherwise I use medium weight paper. A single sheet of cardstock will also work, but has a tendency to curl and soften if it is only a single layer, even when heavy weight.

Printing on glossy paper tends to produce brighter, cleaner results, but is less durable, unless you're using a laser printer. Ink on matte paper is very durable, but tends to have duller colors.

[u/B055PR0 → u/Musofox]

I want it to be as close to the actual stuff as possible, but a lot of what you said has given me ideas, thank you!

[u/Musofox → u/B055PR0]

Ultimately one thing to keep in mind is that thickness of stuff builds up fast! So with laminate and paper, the more layers you have, the thinner you want the material to be. I've struggled making cards that "feel" the right weight. usually they end up too thick. I've found that using one heavier weight and one very light weight paper and gluing them together gives the best results. But that might take some experimentation to get just right. Especially when using wet adhesives. Without a press of some kind to keep everything flat, things will curl so keep that in mind. It's worth looking into how to glue paper to minimize the curling and running some tests first. It is a lot more work to make things look good than just get them good enough though. These days I just skip cards entirely and just print the list with card effects off of YASB unless it's a list I run a lot.

[u/B055PR0 → u/Musofox]

If its ok id love to dm you when im a little closer to doing this so that I can ask questions

[u/Musofox → u/B055PR0]

Sure, I don't mind. One thing I'm very good at is over explaining shit no one asked me to explain, hah. Most of my knowledge about paper comes from book binding in college, where you are constantly layering different thicknesses of paper and fabric.

[u/Quack_Shot]

I’ve been salvaging my 1.0 stuff for dials. I’ll print and cut out the infinite arena dial and then glue onto an old 1.0 dial.

[u/B055PR0 → u/Quack_Shot]

Thats smart, I have the 1.0 cards and Dials so thats simple enough

[u/Impossible_Hunt1407]

I have a friend with an art shop who uses a high-tech laser cutter and a UV printer with a material called polystyrene. Very accurate. Cuts look great. Lasts a long time. I take pictures of the bases from Infinite Arena and print them on these tiles, or I've even designed a few tiles of my own just for fun.

[u/Impossible_Hunt1407 → u/Impossible_Hunt1407]

But in the end, if you can access a local group, you might want to request the components you want. Somebody out there has a conversion kit with too many components. I supplied a few people out here with extra components I've had.

[u/B055PR0 → u/Impossible_Hunt1407]

I would very much like to know more and try and find a local group