The Antares 2 ruleset and lists have been designed with printing-at-home-in-black-and-white (greyscale) in mind. We’ve deliberately not used colour except where we’ve had to, such as in the colour version of the Universe Guide (also available in greyscale) and have deliberately kept the background simple or plain. We also used A4 paper and a font that can be shrunk easily for US-sized papers for the same reason.
Rather than print them off at home and put them into a ring binder (like Tim and most likely Rick), some players prefer other options. Tim prints his Army Lists off 2-up on A4 (so A5 pages) in booklet format on two sides of the paper – but then, his printer supports such functionality. An ancient, long-handled stapler and a central staple means he now has a number of Army List ‘booklets’ which slot easily into his army boxes. All that’s needed are a pair of reading glasses…
Others prefer ring-bound copies, with better covers.
You can, however, take them to a printer and ask them to print them off and bind them for you. Players have explicit permission to do so for their own use, just as they permission to print off their own copy. 🙂
It might help beforehand to assemble the pdf’s into a single, longer PDF book using a program such as CutePDF or perhaps even Affinity or Adobe Acrobat using the ‘Combine Files’ function. At this stage you can also add a cover, whether one of your own design or one of the rather nice covers players have provided for personal use (and which are available on the IMTel Facebook group – thanks, Jamie M!) and add them to the front. [Ed: Producing a generic A2 cover is on our ‘things to do’ list, but sits firmly behind ‘Vorl’ and other things being tested.]
An alternative is, after creating a book block, you submit them to an online document printing service. These are quite reasonably priced, offer fast turnarounds, and in some cases offer a choice of covers or binding. We’ve listed a few below, includinga walk-in store in the UK, and will highlight more as we ggo on. All prices given below are correct as of the time we were given them (end May 2022): given the state of the world economy at that time, we do not believe they will stay correct for long.
Note: We’re not looking for large-scale printers for a full POD service, just for individuals printing the digital copies. We’re generally aware of the larger scale POD providers such as Drivethru family, LuLu, Amazon, Lightning Source, and so on, but these are for players! 🙂
DOX Direct (UK)
URL: https://www.doxdirect.com/order/simple_upload
This is Tim’s go-to, simply because they are easy to use and fast. The link takes you straight to their upload page: just follow the instructions. On the final page, just before you checkout, you can change all the binding options: spiral bound, other binding, plastic covers, card covers, and so on. Note that we’re pretty sure Dox also allows you to combine several files into one.
Maxphoto stores (UK)
URL: https://www.maxphoto.co.uk/
Matthew Doyle works for and uses maxphoto. They are scattered round the country and whilst the website focuses on photo work, they do business printing – the service you can ask for for reproducing the A2 books. “Each branch operates as it’s own little store” so you “can make as much as a single copy with no setting up fees”.
Wir Machen Druck (EU)
URL: https://www.wir-machen-druck.de/
Ondrej Slezacek of the Pressburg Shard recommends these. His own experience has been with a “gloss hardover with glossy quality print insides and that tassel for bookmarking, we ordered batch of 5 and ended at around 17E per book, 294 pages format between A4 and A5.”
Staples/OfficeMax (US)
Joey Pruitt mentioned that “If you live in the States you can use OfficeMax or Staples. Upload the file to their online print order form and select your cover, binding and paper options. It will be ready by 2pm generally.
Prices range around $20-$30 for spiral bound, plastic covers, black and white printing.”
OFficeworks (AUS)
URL: https://www.officeworks.com.au/print-copy/p/document-prints-pcdhdpcp
On the FB group, Marc Browne recommended Officeworks: “In Brisbane Australia, I used Office Works, and I had printed the Core Rules, Weapons and Equipment, and How to Play, and ring bound together for $26.”
Free Online Army Lists complete with all stats and weapons for each faction are available from the A2 PDF Army List page.
Rules Central contains the latest Antares 2 rulebooks (Core, Arms & Equipment, Playing the Game and a Guide to the Universe) as well as a quick-ref and .zip file downloads with all the files, and a link to the living FAQ. All these can be found in the menu system above or at Rules Central.
Antares Nexus 