Custom Game Boards
A board game isn't a board game without a game board! At Ally Sourcing, we offer you a comprehensive custom board game manufacturing and printing service tailored to your needs
The fundamental component of any board game is… the board. The board is the focus and field of play, the arena in which the players — either collectively or individually — battle to win. It’s also the largest component in a game and one of the most powerful images of the game’s theme and imaginative atmosphere. So, a custom-made board game must have a board that’s robust, practical, and eye-catching. It needs to stand up to repeated use, facilitate the flow of play, and look good.
Whether you’re just beginning to explore the options or you’re nearing completion of your game design, it’s never too soon or too late to talk to us about your needs. But to give you an idea of what we can offer, here’s a quick-start guide to the materials, thicknesses, folding options, shapes, printing choices, and special finishes you may choose for your game board. We can create a range of solutions from basic and standard — which are still very good! — to premium according to your needs.
Our minimum order quantity (MOQ) is 200 pcs.
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Custom Game Boards
Board games may be made from a variety of material substrates. Depending on your design choices, these can then be covered with other paper, coated, oriented, and finished in a number of ways, including reinforcing any folds with fabric and wrapping the edges for a super-neat, high-end professional look.
Grayboard
A versatile, robust board made from compressed recycled fibers, with a gray-colored, natural look. It’s inexpensive but needs to be covered with coated paper before printing, after which it makes an excellent game board in the basic to standard range.
ESKA Blueboard
Originally devised for use in making jigsaw puzzles, this has rapidly become a board game industry favorite. Made from recovered paper waste, dyed blue, and compressed, it’s super-easy to cut, fold, laminate, and wrap for printing. Add to that its low environmental impact, and you see why it’s such a popular option. Different grades make this suitable for both standard and premium solutions.
When choosing the substrate material for your game board, you’ll need to factor in the basic costs of the material and any subsequent treatments such as lamination, paper wrapping, varnishing, and so on, which you’ll need to make the surface printable, durable, and resilient. You must also consider if the materials lend themselves to cutting and folding, if that’s what you need; and also, the weight it adds overall in terms of ease-of-use and shipping.
Custom Game Board Thickness Options
The thickness of your game board depends on its size, the materials from which it’s made, whether it’s laminated. Here’s a general guide to the most common thickness of the different board substrates outlined above when used to make game boards:
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Grayboard — most commonly 2 mm to 2.5 mm, but you can also make it thicker by gluing two sheets together
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ESKA blueboard — available in 1.5 mm to 2.25 mm thickness
Obviously, the final thickness of your board depends on any further layers or laminates, treatments, and finishes you add to it—even ink has weight and thickness! So, it’s worth taking it all into account when designing your game and thinking about how it will all fit together, how much it will weigh, and what size box you’ll need to house it all comfortably.
Not seeing the materials you are looking for? Contact our expert for sourcing help!
Custom Game Board Folds
A well-designed and manufactured game board may be bigger than the box you’ll pack it in! So, you’ll need to build in a fold structure. Fortunately, you can base this decision entirely on the practicalities of packing, because even complex folds with splits in the board won’t change the playability of the game if they’re expertly manufactured with precision die-cutting and finishing. While more complex folding system are possible, most boards are folded in one of the following four ways:
No-fold
This isn’t a fold at all, just a flat board that fits in the box as-is!
Bi-fold
Typically a single fold right down the symmetrical middle of a rectangular panel, splitting it into two parts. Basically, you fold the board in half.
Tri-fold
This has two folds and folds up like a concertina with one of the outer panels folding back and the other forward over the middle panel.
Quad-fold
This fold requires a cut to split a section of the board, so that the two upper quarters fold down over the two lower quarters and then the whole board folds back on itself.
In principle, you could keep going with more folds and cuts—such as a six-panel multi-fold—but realistically, that’s as far as you need to go—without getting into some pretty serious engineering and geometry! Other options are non-rectangular boards. So, you could have a circular board, for example, or a hexagonal one, and so on. But consider that the more unusual the shape and the more complex the folding needed, the more expensive it will get.
Standard Sizes & Shapes
While we’ll make your custom game board any size and shape you like, there are certain standards which have proved best for most game designers both in terms of functionality and cost. These are either square, rectangular, or round shapes that fit within these dimensions.
10 x 10
18 x 18
20 x 20
24 x 24
20 x 24
Custom Game Board Printing Options
We use only eco-friendly soy ink for colors of unmatched brightness and vibrancy while respecting the environment. Board printing options are:
CMYK offset printing — which uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black to create the whole spectrum, and is the most cost-effective, popular, and practical solution for most retail box color printing needs.
Pantone color printing—also a form of offset printing, but used to obtain 100% faithfulness in color reproduction. A little more expensive than CMYK.
Silk printing—not suitable for photographs but ideal for printing logos, text, and simple graphics on black or colored paper.
Silk printing
Our Eco-Friendly Promise
When requested, we use paper stock that’s sourced from FSC-certified sustainable forestry and recycled paper material. We also use environmentally-friendly soy inks—based on harmless, biodegradable vegetable products.
