Monday 7 January 2013

Production

It was pointed out to me over the weekend that I'm generally writing for people who know what I'm talking about - people who have played the game or myself - rather then a wider audience.  Which might be an error even if it's an understandable one when I created this blog to stop bombarding my non-gaming friends on other social media sites.

But lets set out what actually needs to be produced to make a copy of giant stone head.  I'm not going to talk about art assets since that is in the hands of dr Geof of the island of doctor geof.  Since I'm going to talk about costs I should point out that I believe I have a production budget of about £15 per a copy.  I'm sure I have have talked about where that number comes from before but if not - just go with it.

Box -  easy to overlook but we obviously need something to keep it in.  I've not actually tried to source this one yet - as I figure it should be easier to do then a lot of the other issues.  But to get 100 copies of a custom printed box of an appropriate standard size I'm estimating will cost about £1.

Rule Book - another one I think will be easy to do and this one would be easy.  Using digital printing 100 copies of a rule book is not going to be over 50p and if I can write out the rules out well might well be a lot cheaper - I think the rules for Giant Stone Head might well be possible to put on two sides of A4 which would make it a single double sided piece of paper which would be very cheap.

Score chart and turn sequence  somewhere to keep track of the VP's and turn order and general help and advice.  This just needs to be on thinish card - so that's about 50p.  This would replace the player aid cards.

Pieces - each player needs 18 meeples and a single piece for a big man - I've received a quote for suitable pieces at £1.50 a copy. I even end up with a lot of spare pieces due to the minimum order.

Hexes - I need 19 hexes - printed on one side.  This one is a bit of a printing nightmare being a pretty specialist printing job with a run size so low no printer could be bothered.  But the idea has been floated of getting the hexes laser cut out of plywood.  I like this idea because having nice wooden hexes with patterns burnt onto them would be something of a plus point when coming to actually sell the game - and making a virtue out of a problem would be good.  I've got a very rough quote of £6 for a sheet of wood A3 sized - which we think should provide enough space with some wastage around the edges.

Worshiped and Unworshiped stone heads.  After a talk about 3D printing getting more of the lovely heads I have in my test version done is just not going to be possible.  So it's either getting a mold done and hand make them or lets make a virtue out of a problem again.  I need about 42 Unworshiped stone head markers - one for each space on the board.  And I was planning on getting them cut out of the wastage around the edge of the wood on the hex board...   If I get a giant stone head cut into one side with the other side blank - then I can create two sided counter.  Cost - nothing - since the cost is included in the production of the hexes........  it's going to be a pretty crowded piece of wood if we are honest so that's a possible problem.

Build cards - these don't even need to be cards since there are only 12 of them and they don't get handled as much- in fact some sort of token would work just as well.  I suspect they could be printed on reasonable card and then cut out.  Possibly manually - since getting proper punch out bits I'm not sure is an option - that's very specialiced printing.  Thinking about it I'd be tempted to put them on the magic sheet of wood - but then that gets supper crowded.  But lets assume we are looking at a sheet of card that gets manually cut out that looks like it's another £1 for thicker card.

Action Cards - there are currently 72 action cards and apparently I need to be looking at multiples of 52 for a professional printer.  At the moment card mix is something that needs sorting - so it's possible - there are a lot of repeats in the deck so trimming is possible.  With a maximum hand size of 7 and 5 players then we should always have at least 17 cards in the deck so that's workable.  Sadly well I've contacted a couple of card printers I've heard nothing back - I'll have to chase again - but I've got not idea of the cost of this.

So how are we doing with our £15 budget.....?

Box: £1
Rule Book:£0.50
VP sheet and turn sequence £0.50
Bits: £1.50
Hexes £6
Worshiped and Unworshiped free! (maybe)
Build cards £1 (with a bunch of hand cutting)
Estimated Total - £10.50

Which leaves a budget of £4.50 for action cards - which is not going to be enough....... There might be some over estimation caused by rounding in there but I don't think that much........

4 comments:

  1. Here's a thought (and one I like quite a lot):
    If you want to cut 42 stone head markers from plywood and burn two faces onto them, you should make three sets of 14. Set one depicting unworshipped and worshipped heads, set two depicting unworshipped and toppled heads, and set three depicting worshipped and toppled heads. That way, each game will contain enough markers for stone heads, whichever condition they are in. To my mind, it feels more satisfying for the player if the three different states are visibly evident. :-)

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    1. When you say "3 conditions" what do you mean? I think of there only really being two conditions for stone heads. Either Worshiped or the 3D printed head(and containing a VP) or the unworshiped or the plane disk (not containing a VP). There are two ways of going from the first state to the second by violence against your heads or you doing it yourself - but the end state is the same in both cases.

      Or have I misunderstood something?

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  3. On action cards: You can actually get card decks in various different sizes, depending where you're sourcing them. 54 is the default, but most printers seem willing to do other numbers. They just won't do you tuck boxes for them [which you don't need anyway]

    72 is actually a good number, it's a multiple of 8 (which is what some of the printers I've looked at want; standard decks of cards from them are 56 cards) and a multiple of 9 (which is more common among printers I've looked at)

    Card printing has been something of an interest of mine of late, as I'm working on two purely card-based projects.

    At a run of 100 copies, however, you're going to be *very* hard pressed to get the value you're looking for.

    The best recommendation I can think of off-hand is http://www.printerstudio.com/personalized/custom-playing-cards-gifts.html

    Order before march, you have free shipping. Sure, VAT still applies, but your final price should be ~£4.80 per deck. Which, when you're only going in for 100 decks, is pretty good.

    I suppose I could check through my chinese quotes and see if any of those are better for you.

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