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Grison's Rectangular Heroscape Cards (500+ in Poker & TC Formats)

Grison

Grison

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Way back in ancient times, I helped @Raudulfr Shieldcrusher adapt his original trading card format for use with poker-sized playing cards. (If you're willing to wait for a good coupon code, you can get these printed via Artscow, Cowcow, and similar services for as little as $7 per deck with free shipping. That's about 13 cents per card, and you don't have to print or cut anything yourself.)

As existing fans of the rectangular format know, trading or playing cards work well with 9-up card sleeve pages & binders, making it easy to browse through your collection, formulate ideas, and retrieve the right cards for a given army. (I like to keep an extra set of cards in the sleeves, so that I can pull out cards for play and easily put them back in the same place.)

Over time, @mathguy, @Trivia Knight and others have continued the trading card format, extending it to Valhalla Customs (C3V & SOV), the new Age of Annihilation units, and other genres. They've done amazing work, and I'm grateful to them for leading the way. The format presented here is clearly derived from their efforts; I've just adapted it to suit my own preferences and aging eyesight.

@Raudulfr, @mathguy and @Trivia Knight have each kindly given their blessing for me to share this variant with the full community. I offer it not as a replacement for their work, but rather as an additional option if you happen to like my particular changes, or if you prefer playing cards to trading cards. (I offer both formats below.)

Example Card Output​

card formats.png

Key Changes / Additions​

Spoiler Alert!

506 Cards Available:​

  • Age of Annihilation
    • Complete through Rising Tide (the first 40 cards announced by Renegade + 2 alts)
    • Card Images | Trading Card Sheets
      Note that Renegade requires official cards for most sponsored events.
  • Classic Heroscape
  • D&D Heroscape
  • Valhalla Customs (C3V and SOV)
    • C3V Complete through Ogre Castle Crasher (145 cards)
    • SoV Complete through Masha Shingai and Lee Jun (40 inducted unit cards + 2 nominee cards)
    • Card Images | Trading Card Sheets
  • Competitive Unit Congress (CUC)
  • Marvel (The Conflict Begins)
  • Additional Customs
    • Ongoing... (21 cards)
    • Card Images | Trading Card Sheets
    • These are mostly units that I personally have minis for (HOSS Ewoks, Stormtroopers, AT-ST, some SoV candidates, and several others).
    • If you'd like to use, alter, or improve this card format for other customs or projects, feel free! I'd love to see the results.

Resources Included:​

The full set of resources is available for download on google drive.​

Please enjoy, and give me feedback & corrections!
(FYI - me changing Knight --> Knights, Pirate --> Pirates, etc. on Renegade's squad cards is intentional. I'm biased towards the standard that Classic established for this one.)

Available Upon Request​

  • Layered Photoshop files for each individual card (really only needed if you want to create an alternate version of that specific card). In general, the posted master template and example card will let you create new cards in this format as desired.

Ideas / To Do List​

  • Is it worth adding other types of cards, or should I keep the focus on Army Cards?
    • Destructible objects?
    • Glyph reference cards?
As of 12/11/24, the default cards use icons for labeling the main attributes, based on a suggestion from @Zymur and additional feedback from @Mythic. Thanks for sharing your ideas! You'll still see the previous letter-labeled version in the early posts of this thread (before the design was updated). I am still willing to support the older version upon request; just ask and I can reinstate it as an option.
Spoiler Alert!

Barring external factors or especially compelling design feedback, I'm now treating the overall card design as final. I will still add new cards and correct errors, but the overall look should remain consistent.

Change Log (Updated 12/12/24)​

Spoiler Alert!
 
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Wow! Great work! This is really nice to have everything in one place and I think your changes are great. You've thought of everything. Well done!
 
Mythic said:
Wow! Great work! This is really nice to have everything in one place and I think your changes are great. You've thought of everything. Well done!
Click to expand...
Thanks! This project also gave me a very strong incentive to improve my Photoshop automation skills. When I needed to adjust something -- which was often -- I really didn't want to manually change it 400+ times!

A nice side effect is that if folks have suggestions for improving the templates, it's not that hard to make a universal change and republish the cards. It would also be pretty easy to extract the hit zone or figure graphics if someone else wanted to use them for another project.
 
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This is awesome. I love all the additional features. And the re-org for increased readability. I know how much work this all must have been! Thanks.
 

What's in a Name?​

I just renamed all of the shared image files for the individual army cards. My goal was to make them easier to organize consistently, as well as to make it easier to find specific cards or card attributes. (For example, you could search for all of the _AQ_ uilla-associated unit cards.)

The filename pattern is GENRE-SET -- UNIT NAME _GENERAL_ Unit Type.jpg

Example: CL-MS1 -- Grimnak _UT_ Unq Hero.jpg
  • CL = CLassic Heroscape
  • MS1 = Master Set 1
  • Grimnak = Unit Name
  • UT = Utgar
  • Unq Hero = Unique Hero
Valkyrie generals: AQ_uilla | EI_nar | JA_ndar | RE_vna | UL_lar | UT_gar | VA_lkrill | VO_larak | VY_dar

($$) after a figure name indicates a pricing change. So far, these are just the alternate cards for ten Classic figures with revised Renegade tournament pricing. The alternate cards have a cost value that is visually distinct, as well as a notation after the set name at the bottom of the card.

CL-W08 -- 10th Regiment of Foot ($$) _EI_ Cmn Squad.png CL-W08 -- 10th Regiment of Foot _EI_ Cmn Squad.png​

Unit rarity can be helpful when deciding whether to print multiple copies of a card:
  • Cmn=Common
  • Unq=Unique
  • Unc=Uncommon
For the most part I'm using typical community abbreviations. Examples include:
  • W=Waves, R=Renegade releases (basically their equivalent of waves)
  • LFE=Large Figure Expansions (OR=Orm's Return, RV = Raknar's Vision, AA = Aquilla's Alliance)
  • TE=Terrain Expansions (RTTFF=Forest, VW= Volcanic, TT=Tundra, TJ=Jungle)
  • FB=Flag Bearers
  • PR=Promos
  • C3V=Classic Custom Creators of Valhalla, SOV=Soldiers of Valhalla
    • C3V "continued" Classic Heroscape, so their Wave and LFE numbering extends that of Classic.
    • SOV organizes their releases by year, so SOV-2020 means it was released in 2020.
  • CST=Individual Customs

Hopefully this is helpful. With so many files, I figured a fairly structured naming scheme was necessary. Or maybe I'm just unhealthily obsessed. :)
 
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Test-Printing Results for the Playing Card Version​

I got the test print back from the playing card printing service, and for the most part the cards look great. However, the testing did highlight something that I was aware of as a potential issue, but hadn't yet addressed because I wanted to see if it would be okay as is.

Short answer: I decided to make an adjustment. You can skip to the end if you just want to see what changed. If you are curious about the design and testing process, read on...

Playing Card Printing Basics​

To understand the issue I ran into, a bit of background about playing card printing services is helpful:
  1. Rather than printing cards one-by-one, these services typically print a large sheet containing multiple card images.
  2. They then cut the card shapes out of the sheet all at once using a pre-made metal die or punch. (You may have heard the term "die-cut" printing.)
  3. This process is typically automated and very efficient, but it's not completely precise because the cards are cut as a separate step.
  4. Thus, the exact location where the cut will occur can vary from deck to deck, or even from card to card.

    Here's an annotated screen shot from a card printing service:
    Sample Bleed.jpg
    Anything within the green border is theoretically "safe" from being cut, and the cut will typically occur at approximately the red line. But a card could potentially be cut anywhere between the green border and the edge of the image. Because you don't know exactly where the cut will occur, you need to provide images with a larger background that extends beyond the expected cut line.

    The card mask layer in my Photoshop template is intended to simulate this "expected" cut.
    • In the raw image on the left, you can see the exaggerated border elements and white space around the edges.
    • The masked card, shown on the right, gives you a better sense of how the typical final card is likely to look.

      Mask Example.png

Test Results​

Variations in the printing and card cutting process are expected, so the only way to know for sure if a given design will work is to test the card-printing service you are actually using.

Here are two cards from the recent test run. As you can see, the Moltenclaw card is cut roughly where expected, although this particular batch of cards seems to be biased towards cutting off more of the left side. This is especially apparent with the Phantom Knights card. In neither case was anything in the "safe" zone cut off, but the cards definitely appear to be off-center.
Test Prints.jpg
This off-center appearance is exaggerated by two elements of the card design itself:
  1. The main body text is left-justified rather than centered, so there will always be more white space on the right side of the card. This is expected, and while not perfect, I still think left-justified text is easier to read overall - especially when the cards have a bunch of small text. I don't plan to change this part.

  2. The other issue -- the one I decided to fix -- is that the design elements above the main body text aren't actually balanced.
    • On the right edge of the card, the unit's Life, Move, and other core attributes are within the "safe" zone, as I didn't want to risk them being cut off. (Notice that the right edge of the white numbers aligns with the right-most edges of the Valkyrie icon above and body text below.) The colored band beneath each attribute extends all the way to the edge of the image, so that no matter where the card cut occurs, it still looks good.

    • But on the left side of the card, I had allowed the left edge of the unit photo to extend outside the "safe" zone just a bit. (Notice that the left edge of the photo doesn't line up with the left edge of the body text below it.) This layout was fine for the original Trading Card design, and I reasoned that it wouldn't be game-breaking if a tiny bit of the unit photo was accidentally cut off when the same basic design was used for Playing Cards.

    • Unfortunately, the position of the photo meant that the striped elements on the left side of the card -- which are intended to mirror the attribute stripes on the right -- were not actually balanced against the other side. Because the unit photo was "too far left", the stripes on the left side would always be smaller than on the right, even if the card was cut perfectly. And when cut too close on the left, this problem was greatly exaggerated.

The Design Change​

As I mentioned way up at the top, I was aware of this potential imbalance, but I didn't want to change the design until I saw the test results. The reason for this is that simply nudging the unit photo to the right wouldn't have solved the problem. The photo would have crashed into the central information box, which is centered on the card and should remain that way. I also didn't want to crop off the left edge of all of the unit photos, because many of the photos have key parts of the figure, such as a limb or held weapon, along that left edge.

The best solution I could think of was to scale the unit photo proportionally, so that it was slightly narrower and would properly align with the body text below, without needing to be cropped. A side effect of scaling the photos in this way is that they aren't just narrower horizontally; they are also shorter vertically. This in turn meant that I needed to adjust all of the other elements in the upper part of the card to match the new overall photo height.

While changing the entire upper portion of the card just to move the left edge of the unit photos was a significant effort, it did come with a very nice side effect: even more space for special power text!

I wouldn't have even attempted this change if I'd had to manually edit all 450 cards. But I was able to automate most of it once I made the adjustments on an example card. Here's the card I used to test out the changes:

Proposed Revision.png

The card at left is the existing (now previous) design, and the revised version is on the right. Key changes include:
  • The left edge of the unit photo now aligns with the main body text below.
  • The striped design elements on the left and right are now balanced, which should help with card printing variations.
  • Reducing the height of the upper section made the remaining elements in the that portion of the card a bit more crowded, which I addressed as follows:
    • I reduced the font size of the large central Cost value (while also making it wider). Visually the overall weight of the Cost value is about the same, but it's not as tall so the other information below (Species, etc.) is slightly less crowded than they would otherwise be in the revised version.
    • I similarly altered the text size of the 5 main attributes (Life, etc.), making them a bit less cramped within their respective color bands.
  • The height reduction of the top section created slightly more vertical space for the body text below. While this added space was seemingly minor, on text-heavy cards like Tul-Buk-Ra every little bit helps:
    • The names of the special powers are now larger.
    • The actual body text is larger as well.
    • The set name in the extreme lower right corner was previously "at risk" by being partially outside the "safe" printing zone, in order to maximize room for special power descriptions. Thanks to the added space, the set name is now fully in the safe zone along with everything else.

I'm happy with this design change, but feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome.​

So far, according to an independent survey of one additional household member: "I can't tell the difference." That tracks. :LOL:

Any other feedback before I lock down a "final" design?​

I realize that if anyone actually decides to use these cards, they will want some stability in the design so that any future cards match the ones they print now. I'm sure the design will evolve further eventually, but I'm trying finish up with any major changes in the next week or so and will update the main post when that happens.

Happy 'Scaping!

A peek behind the Photoshop automation curtain:
Spoiler Alert!
 

Attachments

  • Proposed Revision.png
    Proposed Revision.png
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Thanks for sharing your experience! I find it very interesting.
Your Photoshop automation is wild. I am decently proficient with the program, but I have never dabbled with anything like that. Very impressive!
 
Myriadite said:
Thanks for sharing your experience! I find it very interesting.
Your Photoshop automation is wild. I am decently proficient with the program, but I have never dabbled with anything like that. Very impressive!
Click to expand...
Thanks! I remember using Photoshop actions a long time ago, but then I didn't use it much for a long time and basically forgot how. When I was working on the card design again more recently, I realized that there were fundamental things I wanted to change that basically demanded an automated approach, as it was far too tedious and error-prone to do manually across so many cards.

The other big driver was wanting to go back and add in all of the Classic cards. I had a design I liked in Photoshop, along with a spreadsheet with all of the card details. I figured there must be a way to merge them together and avoid all that typing, and thankfully there was. (Although I did discover that the spreadsheet data had a lot more mistakes in it than I had anticipated.)

Another nice thing is that Photoshop automation has also gotten better over the years, and with a bit of Googling and experimentation, I was up and running pretty quickly. The core of it works by simply recording your actions as you do them (no programming required). And if you make a mistake, you can delete that step in the recorded action sequence and replace it with a corrected version.

So basically, you can make the changes on a practice card and record your steps, then apply those recorded steps to a whole stack of similar files. The key is making sure that each file has the same basic structure and layers, but automation can help there too. (I made an action to go down my list of unnamed layers and name them all consistently, so that other actions could target the various layers by name.)

Once you start playing with it, it's quite addictive. You begin recording even small sequences of steps and turning them into buttons, which makes everything so much easier. For example, one of the more tedious parts of the card creation process was editing all of the hit zone graphics. Having little action buttons that basically said "make this part red", "make this part gray", or "trim off everything outside this box" saved tons of time because of how many times I had to do that -- even if each automation just reduced a series of four or five mouse clicks down to one.

Action Buttons.png

If you use Photoshop at all, I encourage you to play around with Actions. I forgot about them for far too long, and now I'm hooked again.
 
The changes look great...and I can tell the difference. :)

I am interested to know what POD service you used and if you would recommend them. If it is Artscow and you still think it is good enough quality, would you be willing to provide links to the sets of your final design (assuming it allows you to share your orders)?

Thx!
 
Mythic said:
The changes look great...and I can tell the difference. :)

I am interested to know what POD service you used and if you would recommend them. If it is Artscow and you still think it is good enough quality, would you be willing to provide links to the sets of your final design (assuming it allows you to share your orders)?

Thx!
Click to expand...
Thanks for noticing!! :D

I have indeed used Artscow and/or Cowcow, depending on which site has the best coupons at any given moment. Both are actually the same service behind the scenes. The quality has varied throughout the years, but overall I do consider it good enough for creating good-looking, durable, playable cards that don't require me to manually print or cut anything.

On rare occasions a card or deck is completely ruined, being mis-cut to the point of "safe" elements being removed or white edges appearing along the colored borders of the card. When that has happened, customer service has sent replacements without hassle upon me showing them photos of what I received.

I am happy to share links to my decks, but I actually haven't uploaded the latest card images to Artscow/Cowcow yet. I have one additional "test deck" still in transit. (It's been sitting in LA for a few days now.) That deck includes a test run of the current Valkyrie color palette, along with some special "calibration cards" I made a while back:

Test Card.png

I'll be using those test cards to fine tune the final card images, and then I'll be ready to "lock down" the design and create all of the master decks. At this point I expect to receive the test deck next week, so I should have deck links to share by next week as well. I'll definitely post an update here when that happens.

I'll likely also post direct links to the matching card image albums, so that folks can easily assemble more tailored decks for themselves if desired. My goal with the card images is to have the default "automatic fit" work fine without any manual adjustments, so that making a standard or custom deck is completely painless.


Also -- If folks have interest in using MPC (makeplayingcards.com) instead of Artscow/Cowcow, I have looked into that service as well. Their prices are about double (assuming you are using a good Artscow/Cowcow promo code), but supposedly the quality is better. My hesitations are as follows:
  • Do I need higher quality for a much higher price? Ac/Cc aren't perfect, but the quality is usually completely fine.
  • I hear mixed reports about MPC requiring formal written approval from Hasbro to print anything Heroscape-related, especially more recently as opposed to years ago.
  • Their poker card template guidelines are actually different from Ac/Cc, to the point of having a different aspect ratio. I would need to crop my card images differently to make them equally seamless with MPC. That's not difficult, but it is an extra step and another set of images to maintain. So it really gets back to the other two bullets...
 
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I've been adding more cards based on customs that others have created for miniatures I happen to have.

As I do so, I'm debating which of the following "tags" I prefer to indicate custom cards (just below the hit zone image):

CST -- Sundol _UT_ Unq Hero (star).png CST -- Sundol _UT_ Unq Hero (cst).png CST -- Sundol _UT_ Unq Hero (script).png
  • Ideally, I'd like it to be easy to spot customs when browsing through card binders, so by that measure the asterisk wins.
  • The other two options are clearer in what they mean. But each of them closely resembles other existing tags:
    • The abbreviated CST tag looks similar to the C3V and CUC tags I'm using.
    • The script font Custom tag looks very similar to the Classic tag I'm using. Especially for this one, it might not be obvious at a glance.
On a related note, I'm currently using the color red for the set/source line at the bottom of custom cards. For all other cards, this line is in black. This is a holdover from when I only had a few custom cards, but I'm not sure whether I should drop the red color at this point.

If you have an opinion on these cosmetic choices, I'd love to hear what you think.
 
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@Grison -- this is a huge amount of work and is appreciated.
I, too, like the asterisk for general customs.

I'm in the middle of proofreading all your AoA cards, and will PM you corrections shortly. I have proofread the most recent cards and will share that here, but your card grouping is a bit weird; for example, you have Masha Shingai and Rujin at the top of the SoV, but they should be at the bottom, with the more current cards (Olog). Anyway...

C3V's Agent Nora, Ogre Castle Crasher (Page 2) --no errors.

SoV...you missed Lee Jun and Agrith-Naar.
Rujin (Page 17) , no errors.
Masha Shingai:
Spoiler Alert!
 
UtahScott said:
@Grison -- this is a huge amount of work and is appreciated.
I, too, like the asterisk for general customs.

I'm in the middle of proofreading all your AoA cards, and will PM you corrections shortly. I have proofread the most recent cards and will share that here, but your card grouping is a bit weird; for example, you have Masha Shingai and Rujin at the top of the SoV, but they should be at the bottom, with the more current cards (Olog). Anyway...

C3V's Agent Nora, Ogre Castle Crasher (Page 2) --no errors.

SoV...you missed Lee Jun and Agrith-Naar.
Rujin (Page 17) , no errors.
Masha Shingai:
Spoiler Alert!
Click to expand...
Thanks; I appreciate your feedback and corrections! With regard to the missing SoV cards, I don't usually create cards at my end until units are officially approved by their respective groups and listed in the master index. (I jumped the gun with Masha and Rujin because I have the figures and wanted to play with them. That may also be part of why my Masha card is incorrect, as it's probably from an earlier draft in the nomination process.)

Edit: I just noticed that Masha and Lee Jun are listed as approved in the SoV Display Thread, even though they are not yet listed in the overall C3V+SoV Index. I've updated Masha accordingly and added Lee Jun. I also added a nominee card for Agrith-Naar.

With regard to the sort order of the units, I figured out what was going on. I'm using NanDECK to generate the 9-up sheets from the individual card images, and it's sorting the output by the full path to each image. The SoV nominees were in a subfolder whose path was alphabetically earlier than the approved SoV cards.

As it happens, I'm actually in the middle of a full proofreading pass comparing the card data to @GaryLASQ's excellent online repository. I'm definitely finding a few errors in the cards along the way -- most of which are capitalization inconsistencies or minor word variations. I imported the data for the Classic cards after doing a proofreading run at the spreadsheet level, but the other 250ish were mostly hand-entered over the years or copy-pasted from the various books. I'm sure there are some lingering errors, so I was excited to find a way to export all of the card text back out of photoshop to a spreadsheet for easier text comparison at scale.

I'm sure I haven't caught everything, so I'm definitely interested in seeing what else you find.
 
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@Grison
Upon review...Masha's now good, Agrith-Naar Starved , don't capitalize "wound marker"
Lee Jun: Stealth Leap 25: space is tight, I will grant combining the first two sentences, but I think "leap over figures," "leap over obstacles" and the final "Stealth Leap 25" will still fit.

Age of Annihilation PDF, Page 3-5
Spoiler Alert!

I will get to the first two pages in a few days.
 
UtahScott said:
@Grison
Upon review...Masha's now good, Agrith-Naar Starved , don't capitalize "wound marker"
Lee Jun: Stealth Leap 25: space is tight, I will grant combining the first two sentences, but I think "leap over figures," "leap over obstacles" and the final "Stealth Leap 25" will still fit.

Age of Annihilation PDF, Page 3-5
Spoiler Alert!

I will get to the first two pages in a few days.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I had found a few of these in my recent review, but you did indeed catch more. :) It's especially nice to get another set of eyes on the pre-release cards, as I'm going off of pre-order product photos since Reaper's versions of these aren't yet in the typical repositories.

Card-specific comments:
  • Agrith-Naar
    • Is there a list of capitalization standards for C3V/SoV posted somewhere? Because the style guide I found for C3G specifically capitalizes Wound Markers (but not wounds).
  • Shiori (AoA)
    • The second sentence you are quoting doesn't match the Renegade card posted on their site. Can you share the source for the wording you are suggesting?
    • I'll see if I can manage to spell out Special Attack, but it will require a font size reduction and I'm near my self-imposed lower limit. (Edit: sorry; doesn't fit.)
  • Thyraxis Dragoon
    • With regard to "the Thyraxis Dragoon" vs "Thyraxis Dragoon" -- the card image from Reaper's store page actually uses both versions in two different places. I thought that was silly, so I chose one and stuck with it. Dragoon is defined as "a member of any of several cavalry regiments in the British army." As such, it seems like a title/descriptor ("Soldier") rather than the figure's given name ("Alexander"). Thus, "the..." seems correct. 🤷‍♂️
  • Iron Lich Viscerot
    • Can I just say how much I hate the mess that capitalization is across Heroscape generally? C3G (and I think C3V/SoV) specifically do not capitalize small/medium/large/huge if the words are a descriptor for "figure." Reaper's listing capitalizes them on the card itself but leaves them lowercase in the accompanying card text. Ugh. Reaper is showing a tendency to Capitalize Things that were not historically capitalized, which the former copy editor in me hates.
      (Edit: I've changed the card to capitalize the size references since that seems to be the direction Reaper is going.)
    • Also, "moving with another" vs "moving another" is worded one way on the card image and the other way on their web site text. I had copied the web site text to avoid manually typing, but clearly that's not safe...
  • Necrotech Wraithriders
    • "Base" vs "level" is another disagreement between the card image and text on Reaper's own site. Frankly, based on precedent "base" is more correct in my opinion.
    • In general I try to stick to the official cards, but I do sometimes override card text that is inconsistent with established wording for the same/equivalent powers. One perk of creating my own cards is that I do have some editorial control. :)
  • Queen Qhyrion
    • In the specific case of Queen Qhyrion, there is indeed room for the full text of Stealth Flying. But as stated in my main post, I have adopted the standard for my entire card set to omit the Flying text and abridge the Stealth Flying text across all cards, regardless of how they were officially released. Most cards don't have room for the full text while maintaining reasonable font sizes in this format, and I'd rather be consistent.

      (Edit: I don't know if this helps, but your feedback did prompt me to pull up all of the Stealth Flying cards to see what might be possible. There's at least a bit of room on most of them, so I've added "Flying rules apply" as the first sentence under the Stealth Flying power, followed by the individual statements about not taking leaving engagement attacks when they start to fly. It's not the full text of the Flying ability, but even Flying doesn't get that anymore.)
  • Tuck Harrigan
    • The "...or on Glyphs" text is on the Reaper card pictured on their site.
As a more general comment, I really do appreciate your taking the time to proofread these, and I'll definitely consider your feedback. Please keep in mind, though, that I do edit card text to improve font sizes, so many times I will shorten character names or replace them with pronouns (when it's unambiguous) -- even if it would technically be possible to fit the official card text by reducing the font size.

This approach is a "feature" of this card set, and folks prioritizing the official card text may prefer other options. Alternatively, my main post has links to the templates needed for anyone to create cards in this style, so people can also create cards matching their preferred wording. (I'd even be happy to add such cards to the collection if anyone wants to share their versions back to me, but I'm not necessarily going to create a set of "all official wording" cards.)

Again, thank you; I'll post updated sheets later today with the corrections I've adopted. My apologies if I don't change everything you've pointed out, for the reasons stated above.
 
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While the main post above includes a full change log, I wanted to make sure the following change was easily visible because it alters existing card wording.

Today I edited several cards to incorporate official clarifications regarding line-of-sight for "explosion-style" special attacks that have both an initial targeted figure and additional affected figures. This change was inspired by OEAO's Comprehensive Treatise.

In summary, most such attacks require line of sight to the initial target, but not to the other affected figures. Unfortunately, not every card that works in this way uses consistent language. Because this particular issue affects a large number of cards in basically the same way, I decided to treat it like an errata and update the wording on the affected cards.

Depending on the card, I made one of two changes:​

  • Replaced the phrase "only needs a clear sight shot at" with "only needs line of sight to" in order to align card language with the relevant FAQ rulings.
    (This does not affect other abilities that only require clear sight. It only fixes specific cards, such as Deathwalker 9000, that had used this phrase incorrectly.)
  • Where missing, added "[Name] only needs line of sight to the chosen figure" or "[Name] only needs line of sight to the targeted figure" -- as appropriate for each affected card.
    (Some cards, such as Deathwalker 9000, already had this language, but many of the others did not include it despite working in the same way.)

Cards modified:​

  • Deathwalker 9000, James Murphy, Johnny "Shotgun" Sullivan, Jorhdawn, Jotun, Othkurik, Zelrig, Blue Wyrmling, Sharwin Wildborn, Xenithrax, Myrddin, and Kursus.

The rulings on this issue seem to be clear, so hopefully these changes are welcome improvements that will ease confusion, especially for new players. If anyone has strong objections to these changes, please let me know. If necessary, I can make the original cards available as alternate versions.
 
Knox said:
Any chance there's a version of these organized by release rather than alphabetically? I want to switch to these, but I'd need to be able to update by just printing the last page/ latest releases periodically. So the alphabetical organization is a deal-killer to me
Click to expand...
Yeah, the current sort order for the 9-up sheets is a bit weird. I need to figure out how to get NanDECK to sort by a separate value rather than by the path to each image file. That will give me more control to sort by release order. (Keeping things simultaneously updated for both the 9-up sheets and the individual cards is a bit tricky.)

I will work on this and should have a solution soon.
 
Grison said:
Yeah, the current sort order for the 9-up sheets is a bit weird. I need to figure out how to get NanDECK to sort by a separate value rather than by the path to each image file. That will give me more control to sort by release order. (Keeping things simultaneously updated for both the 9-up sheets and the individual cards is a bit tricky.)

I will work on this and should have a solution soon.
Click to expand...
Amazing
 
Knox said:
Any chance there's a version of these organized by release rather than alphabetically? I want to switch to these, but I'd need to be able to update by just printing the last page/ latest releases periodically. So the alphabetical organization is a deal-killer to me
Click to expand...
  • All 9-up Trading Card sets are now organized by release date, with the most recently released cards at the end.
  • Kudos to @GaryLASQ for having a handy reference to the release order for most cards.
  • For unaffiliated customs, I'm treating the release date as when I created the rectangular card version, so "new" random customs will be added to the end as in other sheets.
As a side issue, I also added a few more options for the Classic 9-up sheets:
  • If downloading the entire set of Classic cards, you can now choose to include or omit the alternate cards (such as Renegade's revised costs for some of the Classic cards).
  • If desired, you can also download just the alternate Classic cards as a separate file.
  • So far I only have a couple of alternate cards for AoA and only one for C3V, so I haven't bothered to split those into separate releases.
    (Doing so at this point would actually increase the page count rather than decrease it.)
 
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@Grison --Sorry, I've been ill.

Re: your comments in post #17 -- C3G is its own animal/organization. The SuperScape guys' format standards have nothing to do with "normal" custom HeroScape groups C3V & SoV.

My corrections for you all refer to actual cards as written, like Agrith-Naar. Not printed text card abilities. For Iron Lich and the Necrotech Wraithriders, I'm reading off the physical card.

And guess what? As you mention in your Thyraxis Dragoon comment, Renegade has different card versions in different areas of their website (eediots!). Did I know this? Nope. All my corrections, like Tuck Harrigan, reference the cards in the Unit Bios section of their site, same as the Unit Bio Thyraxis Dragoon card. Won't know which card versions are the actual card until they're released next February. I won't have Shiori's or Cornelius' printed cards until next week...

Shiori's Renegade Unit Bio card (B) is the same card shown on HSers.com' Book page. Your Ninjutsu Mastery text matches Renegade's Army Card (A) page, and is also the (incorrect) printed power text in the HSers.com Book. I looked at Nobleman Nick's YouTube unboxing of Shiori (2:03), and the (B) Unit Bio card correction I gave you matches the actual printed card.

On to Pages 1 - 2...
Spoiler Alert!
 
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UtahScott said:
@Grison --Sorry, I've been ill.

Re: your comments in post #17 -- C3G is its own animal/organization. The SuperScape guys' format standards have nothing to do with "normal" custom HeroScape groups C3V & SoV.

My corrections for you all refer to actual cards as written, like Agrith-Naar. Not printed text card abilities. For Iron Lich and the Necrotech Wraithriders, I'm reading off the physical card.

And guess what? As you mention in your Thyraxis Dragoon comment, Renegade has different card versions in different areas of their website (eediots!). Did I know this? Nope. All my corrections, like Tuck Harrigan, reference the cards in the Unit Bios section of their site, same as the Unit Bio Thyraxis Dragoon card. Won't know which card versions are the actual card until they're released next February. I won't have Shiori's or Cornelius' printed cards until next week...

Shiori's Renegade Unit Bio card (B) is the same card shown on HSers.com' Book page. Your Ninjutsu Mastery text matches Renegade's Army Card (A) page, and is also the (incorrect) printed power text in the HSers.com Book. I looked at Nobleman Nick's YouTube unboxing of Shiori (2:03), and the (B) Unit Bio card correction I gave you matches the actual printed card.

On to Pages 1 - 2...
Spoiler Alert!
Click to expand...
Thanks for digging so deeply into all of this.

It never occurred to me that Reaper's own images of their own cards would be incorrect. And as you said, in some cases there are multiple versions of not-yet-released cards in various places on the web. I agree with you that the best reference point is a physical card in hand, and for many of these units we won't have those for a while. Just like the not-yet-released SoV nominees, I'm happy to make edits after everything is finalized.

I have started acquiring the AoA units, but Shiori is a great example of a card I haven't yet seen in person. I was relying on Reaper's Battle Network card photo, so I appreciate you sharing the actual text.

(I'm still not always going to mimic the official card text exactly, but I definitely want any differences to be intentional and not unknowing errors. With that in mind, I did manage to squeeze a few more characters into some of these cards and eliminate some abbreviations. But Ewashia's "her" remains; there's just too much text on that card! Oh, and "Varied" vs "Various" was actually an oversight, so thanks for catching that.
 
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Card-Printing Optimizations​

After a bunch of testing with Artscow/Cowcow and MPC's deck-building interfaces, I slightly expanded the extra border area for the individual card images. This doesn't affect the 9-up Trading Card sheets, but it does allow the same card images to now be used with any of the three listed playing card services without further adjustments. Artscow/Cowcow will use the files as is, while MPC will crop them slightly due to their preferred aspect ratio.

Card Specifications​

So long as you select standard poker-sized cards (2.5" x 3.5" / 63.5mm x 89mm), the cards produced via any of these services should be similar. Note that MPC offers lots of different card sizes, including an additional poker size that's almost the same (63 x 88mm). Be careful to pick the right card size for best results:
As previously mentioned, the "list price" for these services isn't that great, but periodic coupon codes can lower the price dramatically. I have typically been able to get 54-card Artscow/Cowcow decks for $7-8 each with free shipping, although sometimes it takes a few months for the right coupon code to come along. (Artscow and Cowcow are the same service; if you're going that route, use whichever is cheapest at any given moment.)

I'll be sure to post any applicable coupon codes I find here in the thread. Please do the same if you find a good one!

Creating Custom Decks​

The links above are to the "build your own cards" pages for the respective sites, which will allow you to completely customize which of the 500+ available cards you'd like to print.
  1. Download any or all of individual card images from the Google Drive links in the main post, or from the Suggested Decks post below.
  2. Upload those files to the custom card service of your choice to create whatever decks you want.
  3. Based on my testing, the default "auto-fit" settings should give good results.
  4. Don't forget to customize the card backs! (You can use one of mine, or any other image you want.)
  5. Be sure to turn off the actual poker symbols, if your chosen card service adds them by default.
If you have any of these cards printed via the services above or any others, please give me feedback on how it worked out!
 
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Suggested 54-Card Decks​

Each card-printing service offers custom decks consisting of a specific number of cards. For example, Artscow/Cowcow decks always contain exactly 54 cards. MPC offers a variety of deck sizes to choose from, but many of these options are also multiples of 54. Figuring out how to exactly fill one or more 54-card decks with a set of related cards can be challenging. Having 500+ cards to choose from makes it even trickier -- especially since the typical card groupings (sets, waves, genres) rarely align with the 54-card deck standard.

Since this is an issue I've had to figure out for my own deck purchases, I wanted to see if I could leverage the same automation that keeps the main card repository in sync. To that end, I've added a new archive section for Suggested 54-Card Decks.

Keeping these in the Google Drive repository offers some significant advantages:
  • The cards will always be the latest versions. (I started to create shared albums at Artscow and Cowcow, but quickly realized that maintaining them would be a huge hassle.)
  • You can easily download 54-card sets to auto-fill custom decks at your card service of choice, without having to gather individual cards from multiple sections of the archive.
You can always create completely custom decks from any combination of cards, but my hope is that these will be a helpful starting point. There are lots of other combinations that could also work. So far, the suggested decks are as follows:

Classic & Official Heroscape​

  • Deck 1 - Classics Part 1 (54 cards)
    • Master Set 1 (RoTV) | Waves 1-3 | RttFF (Dumutef Guard) | Orm's Return
  • Deck 2 - Classics Part 2 (54 cards)
    • Waves 4-7 | VW (Obsidian Guards) | TT (Dzu-Teh) | TJ (Fyorlag Spiders)
    • Raknar's Vision | Agent Skahen Promo | Master Win Chiu Woo Promo
  • Deck 3 - Classics Part 3 (49* cards)
    • Master Set 2 (SotM) | Waves 8-10 | Aquilla's Alliance | Flag Bearers
    • Remaining Promos: Elite Onyx Vipers, Nerak the Glacian Swog Rider, Sir Hawthorne, Samuel Brown
  • Deck 4 - D&D (51* cards)
    • Master Set 3 (BftU) | Waves 11-13
  • Deck 5 - AoA Renegade Releases (42* cards)
    • Age of Annihilation
      (This deck will grow as Renegade releases more sets. Includes 2 alternate cards.)
  • Suggested Fillers
    Ideas to fill out decks 3-5 above, or to sub in for any cards you don't want.
    • Classic Marvel (The Conflict Begins) (10 cards)
    • Repriced Classic Cards (Renegade's tournament pricing) (10 cards)
    • Uncommon Heroes (Having multiple cards for these might be handy) (12 cards)
    • Reissued Promos (The same Elite Onyx Vipers, Nerak, and Sir Hawthorne, but these cards use the Wave 10 set name) (3 cards)
  • Classic Commons by Set (71 cards)
    In case you need more fillers, or just want extra copies of Common unit cards.

Custom Heroscape​

 
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