Template size references
Please notice
1. In WTactics we used standardized measurement, meaning the Metric system that is used by the whole world and not the Imperial one that is slowly being abandoned by academia in the countries that still cling on to it.
2. All font units used in Inkscape are for some reason measured in pixels (px) at 90 dpi and not in real points (pt) as is the standard industry. This means that the sizes of a font in Inkscape are actually smaller when measured in points in other software. Therefore, when working inside of Inkscape, if you want to get a specific pt size you should multiply the Inkscape font size with 0.8. To convert font size from another software (pt) into Inkscape's font size (px) multiply the pt font size it by 1.25. We have filed a bug report about this but don't expect it to be fixed anytime soon.
3. All measurements mentioned in mm have been properly rounded up or down to zero decimals whenever needed. Should you require more exact sizes you can get them by selecting the template object in Inkscape.
WTactics standards
Paper limitation
In general, almost anything can look good in any sizes when viewing the cards in their electronical version on a screen in a huge enough resolution. Today it is becoming more and more common with higher resolutions as a result of technical advancement on the consumer markets for graphic cards as well as screens. Given WTactics will also be printed as paper cards we must use that as our ultimate reference and always ask ourselves the question how the card will look when viewed in a hand, under normal poor lighting conditions, instead of asking ourselves if something looks gorgeous when zoomed in on a screen.
Card Size
The card size is set to 65 x 92 mm and is non-standard. The reasons for this departure from the standard are that:
- We gain a small amount of area. Our cards will have 8 mm2 larger paper area than for example a card from MtG.
- Our cards will still fit in all sleeves/boxes and
- printing services will offer to print in whatever size we want.
- It doesn't seem to matter for economy.
- DIY entails that people wrongly cut away some of the area.
Should there ever arise an incompatibility issue of some kind the players will always be free to print the game in any size they choose to and that suit their specific needs. Since we will be giving the high resolution original images as well as prepared standardized versions for printing there is nothing hindering people from printing the cards much smaller or larger if that is desired. Resizing to custom sizes from the originals is possible in an automated manner via open source solutions such as excellent ImageMagick, for which we also offer already made scripts to help you out with the task.
Card Art
The card art of the Merfolk Noble measures 56 x 54 mm. Please notice that the theoretical and accurate card art area in mm2 is not the same as 56 multiplied by 54 due to our Card Name/Type text container eating up some space as well. In comparison the max measurement of MtG artwork on a standard card is 53 x 39 mm. The effectively used area is larger in MtG, yet we will still pull off the interesting stunt of having relatively larger creature art work on our cards thanks to 10 mm extra space in height and our decision to use waist-up portraits.
The WTactics creature template, as seen here with the Merfolk Noble, has a design that is heavily biased towards creatures that have a humanoid shape, which is usually equal with them being taller than fatter. This makes it harder for us to work with creatures that are bigger in width than height and the biggest drawback of the creature template is made apparent. In general though the trade-off will probably work just fine as most of the creatures in WTactics will be humanoid. In addition, this problem is solved on all the other card types as they use a different template where the Name container is placed at it's top instead of vertical center.
Card Text
The card text area traditionally holds specific rules associated with the card. The area is the very heart of the customizable card games and makes them modular and adds great replayability and the possibilities to create expansions.
We use a card text area that's 56 x 31 mm, while Mtg has a card text area that measures 53 x 24 mm. When we have space to use we will utilize stylistic 2 lines height drop caps to add to the aesthetics of the cards as they play well together with the fantasy theme and our templates in general.
Size References
The following numbers are taken from measurement within Inkscape and specific for the Merfolk Noble card as seen on the right. They are not necessarily identical for every card due to amount of text changing and the card art dimensions.
