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× Painting Minis, Print & Play and Other Creative Type Stuff.

2014 World Cup Card Game

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05 Apr 2013 14:52 - 05 Apr 2013 14:56 #149696 by metalface13
The World Cup Game and the 2010 World Cup Card Game are some of my favorite games, particularly the card game with a tighter, faster game that's easy for big groups to play and have fun. Unfortunately the game's designer has kind of put a hiatus on the series, it's out of print and will probably stay that way unless some publisher decides to pick it up.

In light of that, I wanted a set to play for the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil. So I thought it'd be a fun project to design a set I could print on Arts Cow. Qualification is still going on around the world, so I still have plenty of time to work on this, but I wanted to get some feedback on what I have so far before I continue too far down that road.

I've created the foundation of my own typeface which I think looks cool, but I could see it presenting a readability issue for some people. It would only be the main display typeface on the cards any explanatory or secondary text would be in a different font (still undecided on that).

Here's the typeface with some alternates for 2,5,3 and S.
File Attachment:


And applied to some cards without illustrations.
File Attachment:

File Attachment:

File Attachment:


I'm having somewhat of a tough time brainstorming ideas for card illustrations. I like the idea of simple illustrations of a whistle for the Penalty card, yellow and red cards for the Foul card, a linesman's flag for the Offside card; but the Attack, Defense and 1,2 and 3 Goal cards are a little tricky. How to distinguish Attack from a Goal card? A 2 Goals from a 3 Goals card? How to represent Defense?

I was playing around with illustration styles yesterday and came up with this, which is an extension of how I made the type face, all circles and rectangles to build the shapes. It's not perfect and it's a static portrait that doesn't convey whether he's attacking or defending (but I made him look grim like a scary defender should be).

File Attachment:


Too cartoon-y? Typeface too hard to read? Any comments would be appreciated.

Also I've been brainstorming ideas for team special powers to make the teams play a bit differently. Like maybe Italy's catenaccio style could have Defense cards count as Attack as well, or Spain's tika-taka could allow Attacks to count as Defense cards, etc.
Last edit: 05 Apr 2013 14:56 by metalface13.

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05 Apr 2013 15:07 - 05 Apr 2013 15:09 #149700 by wadenels
I really like the art direction!

Some things that stood out:
  • The Foul Card is hard to read. The red text might look better on that.
  • The Yellow Card is hard to read too.
  • I like the regular 2,5,3,S better than the alternates.
  • The square inside frame on the character illustration card clashes with the rounded look of everything else
  • I think the character looks too much like a Mii from the Nintendo Wii.

I'm not sure what to suggest for character art. I think the character design from the Home Movies cartoon would work pretty well if you softened them up a bit. They tend to have hard edges that might also clash with the rounded look of everything, but I think they'd make a decent jumping off point. Plus, sneaking Coach McGuirk in there somehow would be pretty fun.

EDIT: I forgot to mention; although I don't see it used in a word, I like the look of the V in the lower-right part of the template better than the one in the alphabet.
Last edit: 05 Apr 2013 15:09 by wadenels.

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05 Apr 2013 15:13 #149701 by Dogmatix
I have no suggestions other than "yes please, do this." The WC games were great; shame the original designer moved on to other things.

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05 Apr 2013 15:19 - 05 Apr 2013 15:21 #149705 by metalface13
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the alternates. They're too curvy and don't fit in well with the rest of the letterforms.

Those are the color schemes from the original 2010 game and I wanted to have my type in the same color on all cards for consistency sake. Can't do black type on a black card and black doesn't read well on purple either. There's no reason I have to stick with those colors though, I could change those around completely. But it's a starting point.

I think it's the circle eyes that make that guy look like a Mii. I don't think I want portraits on what are action cards anyways. I don't want people playing the game to identify action cards with team cards.

Edit: Oh and on the portrait, the inner black box is the frame of the illustration and the red box is the bleed area. I just took a screenshot of Adobe Illustrator. Same for seeing all the grid lines in the backgrounds of the other images.
Last edit: 05 Apr 2013 15:21 by metalface13.

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05 Apr 2013 15:23 #149707 by metalface13

Dogmatix wrote: I have no suggestions other than "yes please, do this." The WC games were great; shame the original designer moved on to other things.


Agreed. He was a self publisher and doing everything himself so I think he just ran out of steam. He also had a Rugby World Cup game that never got published due to licensing troubles. I'd love to contact him when I get this all wrapped up for his blessing to make it available to anyone on Arts Cow or see if someone like Z-Man games would be interested.

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05 Apr 2013 16:26 #149719 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Re: 2014 World Cup Card Game
FUCKING AWESOME. Do this. I have WC 2010, but I am missing an England card--if anyone has one I will suck your dick! Or at least pay for shipping (of the card).

Now for design thoughts:
  • Single-joint V is better than triple-joint V.
  • C and G are not easily distinguished -- perhaps add another serif element down? Viz., it ends like an arrow.
  • Add similar elements to 7 to distinguish it from L.
  • Red on green for Mexico and others will make my Dad crazy because it looks like nothing, he is colorblind.
  • 3 is the only upper-right glyph I prefer. The others read too busy.
  • Goal is a ball in or heading into the goal. Attack is a kicked ball, no goal element. Defense is a wall, a sliding-tackling cleat, a ball with TWO cleats near it.
  • I like the dude, but make sure you have a lot of ethnicity.

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05 Apr 2013 16:54 - 05 Apr 2013 16:55 #149725 by Dogmatix
@Jeb: I think I have a couple of spare sets. I bought a bunch of decks when the designer had his "get this crap out of my attic" sale and they were like $20 shipped for 3 decks. I'd also love to take you up on your offer of head. However, I'm frequently told that I'm both crabby and a complete pig. So, would not being Kosher be a problem? Either way, drop me a PM that you want the stuff and I'll go hunting for my spare set. You can get the whole new deck as sending 1 card just means I'll have a deck here that I forget is incomplete...
Last edit: 05 Apr 2013 16:55 by Dogmatix.

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06 Apr 2013 00:54 #149766 by Dogmatix

metalface13 wrote: Yeah, I'm not a fan of the alternates. They're too curvy and don't fit in well with the rest of the letterforms.

Those are the color schemes from the original 2010 game and I wanted to have my type in the same color on all cards for consistency sake. Can't do black type on a black card and black doesn't read well on purple either. There's no reason I have to stick with those colors though, I could change those around completely. But it's a starting point.

I think it's the circle eyes that make that guy look like a Mii. I don't think I want portraits on what are action cards anyways. I don't want people playing the game to identify action cards with team cards.

Edit: Oh and on the portrait, the inner black box is the frame of the illustration and the red box is the bleed area. I just took a screenshot of Adobe Illustrator. Same for seeing all the grid lines in the backgrounds of the other images.


You strike me as a guy who has probably run a bunch of artscow stuff and that I'm probably talking to someone who knows better. However, you haven't run anything from them of late, I'd recommend going slightly lighter than the original WC card games and also using heavy white lines if you don't go fully filled letters for Artscow decks. Ever since they moved to the new higher volume digital press set-up a couple of years ago, I'm finding the output is both a little sloppier in terms of fine lines and (particularly) centered images on the cards and more oversaturated/generally darker. Don't know if it's a matter of the output machine itself or the stock (which is also a little cheaper than it used to be).

I'd also suggest full bleeds on front and back instead of the white border and repeating ball pattern for the same reason I mention about problems centering images. There just seems to be more unpredictable "float" to the images. I haven't run any cards through them in the last year or so, so I don't know what has changed lately (and shit constantly changes when you're talking digital printing these days). When they announced the new output setup, I was pleased at how much more quickly stuff was running and shipping, but a little aggravated by the fact that there seemed to be an even bigger degree of variability to the output than there had been in the past. (I had identical files run the year or 2 years before that I could use to compare. Something clearly changed in the way they were handling output.)

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06 Apr 2013 04:02 #149768 by metalface13
I've never actually printed anything through Arts Cow, thanks for the heads up.

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06 Apr 2013 05:44 #149772 by bomber
Replied by bomber on topic Re: 2014 World Cup Card Game
whats the deal with artscow, you basically just have to make your own images, but what format do they take to put on the cards, and are there are any guidelines to size and resolution etc for best appearance.

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06 Apr 2013 14:40 #149781 by Hatchling
How is this game with 5 players? I have people coming over tonight and I may break it out.

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06 Apr 2013 17:17 #149787 by metalface13

Hatchling wrote: How is this game with 5 players? I have people coming over tonight and I may break it out.


Not everyone will get the same number of teams to play, but I think it works great with any number of people. Everyone will probably have at least one team make it to the knockout stages, probably 2.

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07 Apr 2013 04:55 #149798 by Dogmatix

ldsdbomber wrote: whats the deal with artscow, you basically just have to make your own images, but what format do they take to put on the cards, and are there are any guidelines to size and resolution etc for best appearance.


You use a MS Silverlight web interface to essentially put the images into a pre-made template. From there, you zoom in and out to fill out the whatever (card, mousepad, giant canvas wall hanging, etc.). It's a tedious, timeconsuming sort of task; and not really at all like going to a digital printshop where you hand over the formatted files and tell them what you want. Then again, it's also a fuckload cheaper than a proper printshop.

Now that professional grade digital press set-ups and high volume "business grade" digital printers (think Kinkos/OfficeDepot/etc.) are essentially one and the same anymore, the output is really quite good. But you have a lot less control over what the output looks like because, compared to something like InDesign, a Silverlight web template isn't exactly precise. And, it's not like you're going to get a proof set sent to you and then tell them how to tweak it.

This last bit is why I was so annoyed by the way the output changed in my cards--I'd run them before and had basically corrected them over time so that I knew within a negligible/ignorable degree how they'd look. So, when all of a sudden, I had text slip off the printable area or too dark to read, I knew I was going to be sending more $ off to Hong Kong [where ArtsCow is located] to get it right.

ArtsCow is so popular because they were really the first to make a splash on BGG for making DIY (or straight bootleg) game components of "near-pro" quality and a really reasonable price [if you use their monthly sale codes. You're looking at $8-$10/deck with no shipping from Hong Kong, which usually saves another $20-$60 on any order at all]. (The FFG "print on demand" expansions for LOTR card game and Space Hulk: Death Angel have better looking text but are generally comparable.) The whole silverlight web interface thing blows but it's easy enough once you figure out the weird or counterintuitive bits, and the higher resolution image files you start from, the better your output looks (to a certain point; massively high-res photos and scans far exceed the output quality of most things short of the highest of high end. In essence, all you're doing there is pushing huge files around for no appreciable gain. 300dpi files are more than good enough; it's those 72 to 92dpi PDFs and yanked-from-the-web images that end up all kinds of fuzzy in print even though they looked fine on-screen).

I know Pete has mentioned a US-based printer that he got cards or counters through that seemed quite reasonable and seemed to offer a range of stuff. I remember looking into it for die-cut counters and being shocked at how cheap it seemed to be. Can't remember the name to save my life, though. Nor can I speak to quality, though I'm sure Pete can and will if you alert him to the thread.

In fact, as I think about it, Sag may have had some canvas maps done for V&V through an other-than-Artscow shop too.

My point there is, there are other options if you're interested. I've continued with ArtsCow because I'm lazy and like to pick up odd things. E.g., I've never been able to get my hands on one of the promo vinyl roll-up boards for Navia Dratp, so I took a picture of one off BGG and had it printed on a large bar mat (those 1/4" thick roll-up rubber-backed pads). Makes for a great board that, unlike the crappy cardboard one, actually stays flat. Hell, I could actually throw it in the washing machine if need be.

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07 Apr 2013 15:08 #149815 by metalface13
Printing on any printer 72 dpi is going to look like crap. 200 dpi minimum is needed in order for things to print out looking decent.

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08 Apr 2013 00:29 #149853 by Dogmatix

metalface13 wrote: Printing on any printer 72 dpi is going to look like crap. 200 dpi minimum is needed in order for things to print out looking decent.

True. My (poorly made) point was that those digital presses for the Print on Demand shops aren't that high resolution to begin with. I seem to recall that the pair of DocCenter 100s I use at the office are something like 300x300, and those are comparable to what, e.g., ArtsCow is using (they used to have the specs for their machines buried somewhere on their site). I've seen people who share sets up on artscow who started with extremely high-res files and all they get for that is a headache trying to manipulate shit because of the size. 300 dpi is about all a POD printer is going to handle. (Of course "dpi" is one of those things that seems to mean something different to every manufacturer. They certainly all seem to calculate the figure differently."

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