Sitting here at the office; another day in paradise. Heh. I’ve made my first batch of foil Magic The Gathering tokens. Four (Stormtrooper) soldier and four Germ tokens. The entire process isn’t all too complicated, once you delve in and undertake it. For any and all who are interested in doing this for themselves, it does make for a fun experience, as well as allowing you to utilize ‘one-of-a-kind’ tokens! :)
You will need the following before we can begin:
Magic The Gather foils! The more the merrier!
Acetone (found at local hardware store)
Rag (be it an old sock, t-shirt, or any derivative thereof)
Transparency Paper/Transparent Window Decals (Office Depot brand Inkjet Static Cling decals).
There is an excellent write up with a video series, which can be found here.
First off, you will need a nice, large canister of Acetone (which can be found at your neighborhood hardware store), accompanied with an old sock, t-shirt, or some other form of ‘rag.’ Find some newer foils (the older foils were VERY time consuming to remove the overlaid image for me) and use two strips of electrical tape to tether the foil card to your table. Place your ‘rag’ over the Acetone container’s opening, dabbing a bit onto said rag, then begin ‘waxing-on’ (a circular motion) the stock MTG foil card. This will quickly begin to remove all evidence of the overlaid image on the stock foil card. There is no need to worry about taping off the black (or white) border, as the program we will utilize to make the images (Magic Set Editor) to print (Scribus) onto our MTG card stock already has a border applied. With the recently wiped clean foils set aside, we can fire up Magic Set Editor to begin creating custom tokens!
Magic Set Editor is very user friendly, allowing you to choose a ‘template’ for your token (be it a textless, promo, or even standard token framework). Once you choose your template, simply double click the area inside to import a predefined image to use for your token. The image can be an amalgam of images pasted together in Photoshop, Gimp, or MS Paint, or it can be your very own customized art; regardless, you’ll need the image inside your template, as that image is what we want emblazoned on our tokens! Simply save your ‘set’ or solitary image as a .png, .jpg or one of the other plethora of file type ‘save as’ options. Fire up Scribus; using the printing template found in the aforementioned site (I’ll try to upload it here sometime in the future), simply insert your saved image inside one of the eight designated areas and print away! It may take a few attempts to get your color settings correct, but don’t fret! Once all is said and done, the tokens look pretty dang sweet.
I’ve got to get a new batch going tonight so I can take them with me to Friday Night Magic tomorrow. I’ll be sure to post some pictures as soon as time permits.
Until next time…
