Creating Search for Poseidon's Gold (continued)

Printing

My artist had a favorite vendor for printing projects, CityGraphics of Portland, Oregon, and they did a great job. The manual had a beautiful full-color cover and heavy paper with high-quality black and white print in it. I printed 130 to have some left over for marketing or gaming sessions with new players.

I printed the player cards (800 of them) in full-color and had them mounted on cardstock to give them a durable feel.

The box cover is a work of art that was printed on sticker stock. I was sure I would ruin a few boxes and stickers trying to get them to adhere to the box without bubbles, so I printed 110. They worked beautifully on the Oyster-colored box and made it look much better than a plain brown box.

Treasure Chests of Gold

I wanted thick cardboard treasure like you find in many board games, but I couldn't find anyone to do it for a small run of 100 games. Local printers could do double-thick paper, but it still wasn't durable or easy to pick up. I wrestled with the treasure until it was one of the last things to be created, alternating between die-cutting them myself one at a time to farming the whole thing out. Cutting one set of 20 prototype treasure circles out with circles told me this was a good place to spend a little money.

In the end, CityGraphics suggested a laminated cardstock approach. I paid for a 4-up circle die-cutter and they attempted the first run with the thickness I wanted. The piece fell apart because the plastic was too thick to allow it to melt to the paper! They used the materials they originally suggested and we ended up with 2,000 treasures for 100 games. At $1,978 the treasure was expensive (nearly $1 each), but as a piece that would be handled many times in a game it was worth it.

Next: The Cost