Swag, swag, SWAG!

Swag, swag, SWAG!

No Store Championship this weekend, so this blog post is all about swag!

Everyone loves swag! Don't you love swag? I love swag! And lately more and more players have taken to handing out custom (non-official) alternative art cards in tournaments. (I'm trying to start the movement in Belgium) It's in no way a requirement and no-one will look at you dirty if you don't bring anything. It's just a little extra to be nice.

Look at this picture of all amazing cards I was gifted by other players. So if you think you're kind of an artist or know someone who draws stuff and you're allowed to use their art, you can make these cards yourself pretty cheap! For those that want to, but have no idea on how to begin. Here's a small guide!

Creating the card

Today I'm going to show you the process by making an actual card out of this amazing picture of a TIE fighter I drew! I've long thought about which pilot to use, but art this amazing obviously needs Academy Pilot. 

The first thing we'll need is software to create the actual image of the card. You can use photoshop or something similar. There are some posts on reddit that will help. But in this post we're going to use Strange Eons. Strange Eons is a free tool for creating paper game components. And there is a plugin for X-wing TMG. Be sure to follow the instructions in that thread to install Strange Eons.

And we start making the card. Create a new card with File -> New. Obviously we select a pilot card. A TIE Fighter is already included in the cards, so it's just a matter of filling in all the right text and selecting the image in the first tab. You can create a custom ship, like the Alpha-class Xg-1 Star Wing, in the second tab if you like.

When you're done you can export the final card using File -> Export. Save the images in an easy accessible folder and you're all ready with your card!

Printing the card

We will print the final card using makeplayingcards.com. There might be other sites out there, but this is the one that was recommended to my by several people. X-wing playing cards are 63.5x88mm or almost exactly 2.5x3.5". So we can use the most common option!

Here it gets a little bit complex or maybe I just took a wrong route. We have to go through several more steps before getting the type of card we want .First we select the Custom blank cards. 

Then we need to select the size again. Poker size seems to be exactly what we want!

And finally we get to our selection screen. (Instead of following all previous steps you can just follow this link, but it did show you what a wide array of options there are available right?)

Feel free to play with the settings here until you find something within your budget. May I suggest the tuck box as it provides an easy, safe way to transport your cards. Next up we will start our design!

MakePlayingCards requires us to add a bleeding area. So I increased the size of the image to the recommended 822x1122 pixels while keeping the image centered in paint.net. When uploading the image we first upload one image for the front of the card and we repeat the step for the back of the card. For the back you can use the image that came out of Strange Eons or create your own. Maybe with a link to your blog?

Continue the design process for your card and proceed to checkout. Order your deck of custom cards and you're done. Congratulations! I had cards ordered earlier and it took about three weeks to have them shipped from China to Belgium.

Legality

First let's talk about legality for a tournament. Obviously these are not official FFG cards. So best to take the original card with you as well. Easy to put both of them in the same sleeve. No-one is going to give you a hard time about it, but at some events it might matter. For example, the winner of the European Championships was using a custom Miranda card. When the top 16 started the judges noticed this and per the rules told him to get a real copy of the card. Luckily one of his fellow Warlords was able to provide him the card!

The second part of legality is harder. It's copyright. It is really easy to find cool Star Wars art all over the internet. But please don't use art you just found somewhere, unless you have permission to use the art. Find an artist and commission them to draw you a card. I know Gold Squadron Podcast did this! Or draw it yourself! I admit that even using the templates for Strange Eons, which are exactly like FFG's cards, is a bit iffy. But I haven't heard of any crackdowns on these custom alt arts either. 

So. Have you ever made some custom alt arts? Or have you received some amazing ones? Something in the process I missed or you have questions about? Please share in the comments!

Post was written July 2017. Procedures in Strange Eons or on MakePlayingCards.com may have changed since then.