In the quest for the perfect printing home made expansions there are a few methods that can be employed like the method that Hallow Knight uses or just by destroying a perfectly good set of original cards by applying sticker paper to them like I do!

Cider Vampire has sent another tutorial for printing cards using Microsoft Word to do most of the hard work! Some bits might look a little complicated, but I am sure this article will help you through step by step.

Here is my little guide to how I print my expansion sets out from the excellent Talisman Island website. I’ve tried quite a few of the card sets and have found that they add a lot of fun to the game.

1. Prepare the images:

Most of cards look fine, and other than adjusting the size, they are ready to print. Other cards have extra bits of borders on such as Character Cards made using the template on the Black Industries website. There are a number of programs which will let you crop the cards but I tend to use Paint Shop Pro.

Simply choose File – Open, then use crop tool to trim the image down before saving it.

2. Load the cards into Word:

Open a new document in Microsoft Word

Click on Insert – Picture – File

Highlight all the cards that you wish to print then click on Insert. You’ll most likely see that all the cards are of varying incorrect sizes.

3. Resize the cards:

Word allows you to resize images but only one at a time however I have found a clever little program to help you resize the cards. Don’t worry; you don’t need to know anything about Visual Basic to make it work.

Click on Tools – Macro – Visual Basic Editor and then a new screen should appear.

Then click on View – Code and then copy and paste the following bit of code -

Public Sub ResizePics()

     Dim oDoc As Document, oShape As InlineShape

     Set oDoc = Application.ActiveDocument

     For Each oShape In oDoc.InlineShapes
         oShape.Height = 190
         oShape.Width = 117
     Next oShape

     Set oDoc = Nothing

End Sub

Click on Run – Run Sub/User Form

When you move back to the window with your pictures in you should see that all your cards are the right size! The code above is to format the card size for a 2nd edition adventure card. The table below shows the Height and Width of cards for various editions. You can simply change the Height and Width in the code above to suit the type of card you are going to print.

4. Print the cards:

You can then centre align your pictures and print them out on some nice card. Depending on how well your printer lets you line your card you can simply print the card backs on the other side ensuring that you centre align the backs as well. When you print the backs of the cards you may want to put a border round the card so you can cut them out easier.

To do this Click on Format – Borders and Shading – Box – OK

If you are unable to print on the back of the cards easily you may have to print one side on paper and glue the two halves together or print one side on sticky label paper.

5. Cut out the cards:

You can then cut out the cards using a scalpel or a good pair of scissors. It’s usually a good idea to look at the back of the cards when you are cutting to ensure that all the cards look the same from the back.

6. Play the Game!

Good adventuring!

If you have a different method that you would like to share with the Talisman Community, then please send it to me and I will do my best to get in online as soon as I can!