Average proxies

[Battlefield Schmattlefield]

Does anyone make or print at least averagely good colour proxies for play-testing purposes for a reasonable price? I can't play with B&W!!!

[Thomas David Baker]

Ah, now here is a subject close to my heart :) Prepare for an essay ...

The ink costs on my color printer are really ridiculous. I'm not quite sure how ridiculous. Next time I replace the cartridges I'm going to be completely nerdy and actually record exactly how many proxies I get out of them because I really want to know. In the meantime here is some speculation.

Based on the manufacturers stats (which are probably optimistic):

350XL (black) does "up to" 1000 pages at 5% coverage for 25 GBP or 0.025 per page
351XL (color) does "up to" 580 pages at 5% coverage for 25 GBP or 0.043 per page

Unfortunately proxies are more like 100% coverage. And they're mostly color. So the true cost could be as 75p per page or slightly higher. 9 proxies fit on a page.

So a 75 card deck might easily cost as much as 6-7 GBP of ink to print! A lot cheaper than a single expensive card, though, so maybe still a good idea. Something like my powered-up Teachings cube with 500+ cards may have cost a decent amount in ink but compared to actually buying a Black Lotus or even just a Tarmogoyf it was a lot cheaper :)

In fact, one thing I did to keep things sane with the Teachings cube was to print on "fast draft". I'm really not sure how that affects things but it obviously does use less ink. Unless those stats above are for fast draft and when you print on anything else it's even more expensive! I hope not! The quality on fast draft is noticeably worse but they are still full color full card proxies that are easily identifiable so this might be the way to go. No one playing Teachings cube has said: "ugh these proxies are terrible" or anything. And people aren't shy about that kind of thing at the Games Club.

I'll do it for you for 10p per card. And if you want fast draft I'll try and work out a price for that by printing it and seeing how much the ink level goes down. But I'm only in the country Nov 24-Dec 5 until March 2010 so I might not be that much use.

One other thing is that inkjet printers themselves are almost free - they make all their money on the ridiculously priced ink cartridges - so if you're going to print lots you might want to just buy your own.

The other alternative is laser printers. The cheapest color laser is some Dell thing at about 200 GBP but it comes with minimal toner so there's another immediate outlay for toner which is probably 100+ GBP as well. I nearly bought this instead of the last 50 quids worth of ink. The cost-per-page should be quite a lot lower for those. This page hints at about 27p per proxy page, for example, a third of the price. You'd need to print 300 pages (2700 proxies, 36 decks or 7 and a half cubes) before you started to save money on the laser (assuming no other printing).

So, yeah, it can be done! If you're a cheapskate like me it will probably sting. Or if you're not a cheapskate you might wonder why I'm making such a song and dance about a few quid. But it can be done!

[Battlefield Schmattlefield]

Bloody hell mate this is the most intense and detailed proxy related response ever!

When are you back dude?

[Thomas David Baker]

Fly home Monday. Fly to Rome Wednesday. Back from Rome Mon Nov 23 (late).

[Tiff Leek]

ha Ben, we've spent hoouuurrrsss discussing the relative merits of printing and scouring the net for methods to work out printing costs, that's condensed.

I can print stuff for you on an inkjet at same cost. I'll be down on monday and then not for a couple of weeks 'cos I am going away.

[The Games Club]

Find your nearest Staples and have them print from disc / email for approximately 29p per page (9 cards) this makes a whole deck cost just £2.61. There is even a good likelyhood that you can get it done for FREE.

If you send the proxies as a PDF, most printers will print at 96% original size by default. Staples has a policy that if your print job isn't right first time, they will reprint for free and refund the original charge. You will almost certainly need an original card with you to prove that the sizing is wrong.

This happened with the cards for The Games Club's 10th Anniversary Celebration pt2, netting a saving of over £100 (and I nearly didn't check the job before leaving the store).

[Battlefield Schmattlefield]

Cool good advice.

What about printing them on card rather than paper?

[Tiff Leek]

Ooh much more better - I didn't think of staples as a printer - I looked at kallkwik but they're not great with small runs. They'll do laser as well. Rock.

[Battlefield Schmattlefield]

card vs paper?

[The Games Club]

Battlefield Schmattlefield said:

card vs paper?

Considerably more expensive.

Just to go from 100gsm to 120 gsm costs 33% more. To get to cards stock you are probably looking at trebling the price and run the risk of being accussed of counterfeiting.

I would advise against it.