I have developed a technique for accurately mounting two-sided counters from artwork printed on uncut label stock. Anyone wishing an explanation may contact me at voodie7@aol.com.

My congratulations to Messrs. Rodriguez, Severinsson, and Broden for their fine work!

Ben

Grendel,

I'd love to hear it! Could you post it here for everyone?

A Technique for making Counters

Ingredients:
- Hard Cardboard Sheet - the thickness of a token
- Adhesive Glue in an aerosol can
- Permanent Clear Gloss Finish in an aerosol can
(I obtained the above from an Art and Craft shop)

I am not very computer literate and used Microsoft Paint and a Hewlett Packard Bubble Jet printer.

1.Download that Counter Front and Back Sheets for the various countries from Civilization – the Expansion Project. (I modified these slightly using cut and paste to create an extra 5 tokens per sheet – in case of accidental loses/damage to tokens in the future.)

2.Leaving the outside black border, edit and remove the inner lines of the Counter Back Sheet. (This is so that if you do not line things up correctly no one will really notice that the back doesn't identically match up with the front.)

3.Print our the Counter Front Sheet and Counter Back Sheet and cut them to their approximate size – ensuring that the borders are spared.

4.Cut out a section of the Hard Cardboard Sheet, slightly larger than the Counter Front sheet.

5.Spray the adhesive glue onto this cardboard section, and then attach Counter Front Sheet.

6.With a pencil extend the border lines to the edge of the cardboard section.

7.Spray adhesive glue onto the back side of the cardboard section, and using the pencil markers on the edge, position and attach the Counter Back Sheet so that it is a (near) perfect match to the Counter Front Sheet.

8.Allow to dry

9.Spray Permanent Clear Gloss Finish onto both sides. This will not create a gloss finish but will prevent sweat and grease from player fingers smudging the ink on the printed tokens. (Hairspray might also be used as a fixative, but I have no experience as to how effective it might be.)

10.Allow to dry.

11.Now the tricky bit – cutting the tokens out. Initially I used scissors – quicker but produces uneven tokens in both thickness and shape.

12.The best method I discovered (on my penultimate batch) was to use a sharp knife like a Stanley Knife or Scalpel Blade.

13.With the Counter Front Sheet on top, carefully cut along all the parallel lines in one direction until all the depth of the cuts are ½ – 3/4 of the thickness of the cardboard. Then repeat the process for the perpendicular lines. (Do not cut fully through the cardboard in one direction first, because you will be left with 6-7 thin strips of tokens, and then each token has to be cut out individually. It is nigh impossible to cut the tokens out square using this method. I tried!)

14.Once all the lines are nearly cut through as detailed above, carefully cut through the full thickness of the cardboard.

15.All being well you should have a batch of even square tokens that are of uniform thickness and that look professionally done.

If someone has a better method, please respond.

This is great idea - I'd love to see the base set have some extra counters (maybe add an extra ship and city as well.)

The rest is sort of what I was planning to do next, except for the lining up. What I was planning on doing was to glue one side to the poster board, then let dry. Cut the dried result down to the rectangle (i.e. don't cut the paper to begin with.) Then cut the reverse side down to the rectangle... and then glue that on and let dry.

I wasn't planning on coating the result, but then I'm using a color laser printer. Still, coating could might be useful.

I've created the printsheets for the new credittokens.
based on the new credit-symbol used for the calamities.



No more 5-coloured tokens, cause they've been removed from the advances too. It made counting harder instead of easier.

The printsheet is made up this way, that it's both front and back, so you don't need a front-sheet and a back-sheet anymore.



I'll upload the layered-psd-file to Jonno's server.

P.s. ofcourse, the current tokens will do as you like. These are simply graphic updates, equal to the new advances.

Over the last 30 years I've tried about every method for making counters I could think of. I've gottent to the point that I'm quite pleased with the sets I'm producing now. The most difficult of recent have been a set of replacement/variant counters for AH Alexander the Great:

http://www.ahgeneral.org/gameparts/alex ... unters.jpg

Back in the 60's The General magazine (in volume 2) had a note that you could spray on a plastic coating to the counters that came with their games to prolong their life. Why AH never did this with their original counter sets is beyond me. There wasn't that much money in the parts business for them. After examining my Victory in the Pacific game recently (one I almost played to death in the 70's) I saw how poor the counters had become. AH never coated their counters with anything, they must have used a semi-gloss brochure type paper in the printing process.

Ever since I got my first hot roll laminator, I've loved the look and feel of the counters that I make with it. Why anyone would want non-laminated counter sets is beyond me. Getting the counters right starts with math. If your laminate is .003 and your 24lb paper is .004 and the glue .002 you can then determine the chip board thickness. For the Civ counters I'm going to use .052 instead of the .042 I usually use, making a thicker more robust game piece. The final counter thickness should be between .06 and .065

You don't want to leave black cut lines on the counter sheets, but some cut marks are OK. For these I will use a die press to stamp the citys out and either the $500 gilouteen cutter or a Fiscars rotary trimmer. If you don't have a rotary trimmer for cutting counters, you really shouldn't cut them. That piece of equipment is a requirement. Using a box-cutter is just not right.

I'm hoping to have a complete set of 600dpi counters made up by the end of this month (or early next month) for player review. I will probably send out lots of small samples for players to evaluate. A complete set of 18 civilizations and 2 barbarians should cost about $85.00 plus shipping.
Most people can use the counters that came in their original Civilization game and order some other sets to fill in for additional players, keeping the cost down a bit.

I'm pretty excited about the civs completed so far, and will send Jonno a file with everything in it for the website. I'm taking great care to use historical images that are correct to the civilization depicted. The image template will be flexible enough to alter the colors easily if needed. I noticed that the official Carthage color is a bit red. Perhaps some 'official' colors need to be established using the Pantone scales?

Craig,

Are you using any new art for your counters?

Yes, I hired an artist to come up with some authentic 600dpi designs. So far I've completed 5 sets myself. Some help eh? She is supposed to have a similar number ready for me to use, but I don't have them yet.

I'm hoping to complete a demo set of complete counters by the end of the month. I think I can be on track for that. I'm planing a mail out with samples attached showing, with some detail, the effort put forward on these sets.

I'm taking painstaking steps to assure that as many images as possible are historically accurate. There will be some discrepancies, but much better than the AH originals, or what is currently available.

There will also be some hard choices. For example - I like the artistic graphic currently used for the Celt population marker. The one I selected instead is Vercingetorix charging with a sword. They both look good, but which should be used?

There will of course be some problems. Like the ships. I have plenty of ship images, but some of the Indian cultures were land locked and really don't have any. Or, the Assyrians for example. They were conquerers and used the military assets of the subjugated nationalities, so - should they have Phoenician ships or Babylonian reed boats? This is the most difficult subject to find accurate images for. Other problems exist by the selection of the civilizations themselves - like Iberia, not much information there, or Parthia - is it Greek under the descendants of Alexander or Persian, or both. The non-existence of Greek or Persian is also an oddity, since they figure so prominently in history.

Personally I would use Greek, Persian, and Hyksos but I am simply happy with the effort that has been put forward to date. A true gamer like myself would be happy with the civilizations being named after letters of the Greek alphabet, there are so many choices, it simply doesn't matter that much. (to the game)

But if we are going to use real civilizations, then I want the images to be accurate to them as much as possible. I'm a purist in that sense.

Did you really hired her for this game, or for another sort of "game"?

I then should prefer an older alphabet, since the Greek alphabet wasn't made yet in the timespan of our game. The vowels weren't invented yet and we only had consonants. A good choice for me should be an old Hebrew alphabet, where the 22 letters/consonants were more referred to the meanings of the words representing the names of the letters. For example, the old "M" referred to water (mayim) and was drawed as a larger number of waves. (like /\/\/\/\/\/ ) And there is no Hebrew-like civilization in our game, so this is a sort of neutral alphabet, created in the middle of the area where we play.

But if some of our civilizations never had ships, is it not an option to choose another civilization who had ships?

UPDATE:

Bad News - My artist Quit!

Good News - I've got half the counters done and printed a test set of them today. I will cut them tomorrow.

Apparently, when I have time, I can finish a civilization set per night, and 3 or 4 on weekends. So I should have the rest completed by the end of the month.

You could use the set of counters that came with the original game, and order additional sets to end up with 18. This would save a bit of money if you don't have the $$$ for all 18 sets to start with.

According to my calculations I should charge $6.75 per civilization, for laminated and cut counters. Thats assuming I have no defects and have to replace half of them (as has happened before) but we learn from our disasters. Postage is extra. If you prefer to cut them that can be arranged and would reduce the price as well. Contact me for a quote.

Anyone interested in a sample (a few finished counters glued to an advert page) should email me and I'll put you on the list. Postage for these samples will not be cheap, so I'd appreciate serious inquires only. I expect to mail out some samples in the next couple weeks.

I think my artwork is better than the artist's that quit on me, so I guess that is an improvement.

sales@ahgeneral.org

I'm still interested in what the tokens look like.

When it comes to colouring, combining a set with the current advanced civilization tokens is somewaht a compromise to me.

I'd rather design some myself then using two different sets.
first I want to see your results.

I hope you don't gotta pay for an artist quiting during a job.

Here is a photo of the sample counters I've made up:

http://www.indycomputerstore.com/Photos ... ers_01.jpg

What you don't see in it is the detail of the 600dpi printing. You can't see the individual bricks in the Nineveh Gate, or the 6 arms on the Dancing Shiva, or the Individual stones in Stone Henge, or the detail on Hammurabi, etc.

You also don't see the glossy finish of the lamination, or the back sides, which I completely for got to include. I will cut a set later tonight and maybe post some photo's of them. The .052 card stock is pretty thick when double side printed and laminated.

looks good on the pic

good to see you also included the spare tokens, city and ship

looking forward to see the actual tokens

Well here are the Carthaginians, cut, with backs showing and a closer view.

http://www.indycomputerstore.com/Photos ... ers_02.jpg

Two problems with the photo - camera doesn't focus well on close up. and 72dpi web image doesn't show detail of backs well.

Do you like the Carthage sea wall as part of the city image?

I used this image as a basis for the city image:

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsi ... ur3_sm.jpg

looks fine to me