How to make print & play game counters

Some of you may ask themselves: If i were to download a PDF with many nice counters, how the heck I am supposed to make them into real counters you can move on the gameboard without much fiddling around?

First of all buy some sticky label paper or self adhesive photo paper. I use photo paper 127 g/m (50 A4 sheets for about 12 Euros on Amazon) right now which gives me, when printing on high detail, very nice results.

If you dwell on the greedy side and print on sticky labels, you will produce the counters cheaper than cheap, but the prints are from my experience not that detailed and sharp because the material soaks in the ink pretty much. If you do not mind having a bit blurry and a lot darker prints, go ahead! You could also try printing on sticky labels with a laser printer, but who in the living hell owns such a thing? An easier way would be bumping up brightness and contrast with an image editor like Windows Paint. (There I said it, Paint… nobody rides that dinosaur anymore.)

Then apply the printed stickers or photo paper to rubber foam. Cutting cardboard can be a pain in the ass, cork is a bit too pricey for my liking and chipboard…oh well let’s not go there.

Anyhow, you can buy rubber foam in A4 format. The tiles are 2mm strong and cost about 10 Euros per 30 sheets if you buy on Amazon or Ebay. The local craft store is an option too, but will most likely sell them in single sheets and make you pay in gold nuggets or jewelry. In all seriousness, may as well go there. If you live in a bigger city prices will not differ much from Online Shops.

Peel off the edges of the backside of your printed sheet and align it to the rubber foam. Take a yardstick preferably one made of metal because it is very sturdy. Apply pressure with the yardstick onto the sheet. Then pull the backside (of the sheet not the one of your girl-/boy-/it-friend) and push with the ruler. This way you will avoid bubbles in your counters, which looks downright shitty. Just watch the video below and you will know what to do.

After that cut along the edges. If you have two sided counters you can use double sided tape to make ’em stick together (almost) forever. Tape works very well with rubber foam. After that you have nice and firm counters.

If you want to laminate them to seal the surface, do it! I do not own such a thing right now, but surely will in the foreseeable future.

Coolest thing about homemade counters – if the old ones already look too shabby, you just print new ones.

Have fun and leave a comment or like or beer or coffee or jewelry or dog puppy (not poopy you little cute piglet).

Happy (war)gaming!