Making [non-wood] Tokens for Games: Use Washers!
Intro: Making [non-wood] Tokens for Games: Use Washers!
I've seen a lot of people making their own gaming boards with custom tokens and cards, etc. Everyone seems to make their tokens out of wood, which matches their boards that are also made out of wood. But if you don't care that they don't match your other pieces, I have an alternative method: washers.
Washers come in all sorts of sizes, inside and out, so they make pretty good on-the-fly tokens in my opinion.
If you simply need the tokens to be faceless counters, then you can stick with the plain old washers themselves, generally using the smaller ones to save space.
If you plan to have pictures on the tokens, try to find the ones with the smallest hole, or inner diameter, with the outer diameter of your choosing. Then it'll cause less interference later. Then you can print (or paint or draw - whatever you'd like) the picture onto a piece of paper, cut out the circle and glue it onto the washer. I recommend super glue; you don't need much, and I have yet to see any of my tokens come apart after several months of use. Although, if you use super glue, you must use cardstock or other thicker paper because super glue bleeds through normal print paper.
My favorite part about these tokens? They match these 6-sided dice made out of bolt nuts! Maybe you can make pawns from nails, screws, or bolts (ooh, that's an idea I might have to steal...).
Washers come in all sorts of sizes, inside and out, so they make pretty good on-the-fly tokens in my opinion.
If you simply need the tokens to be faceless counters, then you can stick with the plain old washers themselves, generally using the smaller ones to save space.
If you plan to have pictures on the tokens, try to find the ones with the smallest hole, or inner diameter, with the outer diameter of your choosing. Then it'll cause less interference later. Then you can print (or paint or draw - whatever you'd like) the picture onto a piece of paper, cut out the circle and glue it onto the washer. I recommend super glue; you don't need much, and I have yet to see any of my tokens come apart after several months of use. Although, if you use super glue, you must use cardstock or other thicker paper because super glue bleeds through normal print paper.
My favorite part about these tokens? They match these 6-sided dice made out of bolt nuts! Maybe you can make pawns from nails, screws, or bolts (ooh, that's an idea I might have to steal...).
2 Comments
dmccomb 12 years ago
I play fantasy games, and it's a lot easier to carry a box of washers with pics punched from old M:TG cards than it is to carry miniatures.
jacobz_20 12 years ago