Quick Guide to printing mtg proxies

Hello everyone. I’d like to take a moment to share a valuable resource for players on a budget and for players who’s metas don’t mind proxies.

MTGPRESS.NET is a great resource to use to print out your proxies at near perfect size and quality.

Here are a few tips for using the site:

  • It functions best with FireFox (Comments have also recommended Safari), and will give you pretty good detail. Chrome prints are a bit smaller and after a single page, there is a bug where it cuts off the proxies from the 2nd page onward.

  • You can copy and paste your lists directly from tappedout.net, but you will have to delete the “x” beside the quantity before you click “Build it”

  • If you don’t have a printer, or want it printed on better quality paper, you can export the file and put it on some type of media (Email, CD, Flashdrive etc…) and then go to staples to have them print it. Staples in my area charge per page $0.10 for B&W, and $0.50 for color. Be careful though, most commercial outlets will not print copyrighted material. Staples usually has an automated printer that you can scan your debit card, insert your media, and print it without involving store employees. See below for directions on how to export to PDF.

  • You can scale the proxies. If you are limited by resources or need to print a ton of proxies and want to save some money, MTGPRESS lets you scale them down to fit more on each page. I haven’t tested it, but a user has commented that 105% scaling makes for a better fit.

  • Adding cutlines will make it much easier to cut between the cards, not having them makes it harder to distinguish between the borders of cards. This is easy at first, but after cutting 10 pages you will wish you had them. To add cutlines, after you click “Build it”, check the box at the top for adding cutlines.

  • You can choose which art you would like, and this can be done using the sites own engine. After clicking “Build it”, hover your mouse over the art and a dropdown box will appear. Select the art you want.

  • Flip cards will need both sides added as a name. So Nissa, Vastwood Seer also requires Nissa, Sage Animist added if you want both sides to be printed. It will not populate both sides if you simply add in the front side of a two-faced card. For cards with melding (looking at you, Brisela), You will need to add the flip sided name twice (So two Brisela, Voice of Nightmares entries) and then hover over them and make sure one version is the top side, and one version is the bottom side).

  • Tokens can be printed by typing the generic name for the token. A soldier token would be “Soldier”. It does not have some tokens (or maybe I just don’t know the name encoded by the website). Like Nissa, Vastwood Seer’s legendary elemental token (edit: tagged wrong Nissa), I was unable to find it. If a token has multiple colors and/or power/toughnesses, you can hover over the dropdown and change the version until you find the one you need.

  • Using the back arrow will not make you lose everything you typed. As long as you do not refresh the screen, your browser should remember everything you’ve typed. Before you type up a big list, type one card, build it, and click back to make sure this method works. If it doesn’t, simply get into the habit of copying all the text in the box before clicking “Build it”

  • If a card is not found, it will populate with proxies for all the cards it could find and flag an error at the top of the screen showing you the cards it could not find. Simply go back, find the error, and fix the typo.

  • Finally, if you’ve got this far you may just want to print some proxies. When you sleeve them, insert the card that will be backing the proxy flipped so the backside is facing the front of the sleeve. This will just clean up the proxy a bit when you play with them, so when they do slide around a bit, you won’t see an exposed card underneath. This is just personal preference, it makes them look better. The only downside is they will be visible through translucent sleeves, so pick your poison here.

Here is an example of what they look like (sadly my only). If requested, when I get home I will provide more pictures.

Edit: Here is a little bit of a better picture showing a real and a proxy Verdant Catacombs…

Hopefully this will help you, your meta, and your budget. Check with your meta first to make sure they allow proxies in your playgroup. Also, I advise against playing with these at a local card shop, as it can be perceived as a slight against the card shop (and rightly so).

Guide to Exporting to PDF

  • First, you want to build your deck and choose the versions of the cards you wish to print. Then make sure you click the “Add cut lines” box at the top. Scale if necessary.

  • Next, if you’ve got your proxies exactly how you want them, click “Print” to prompt the print box.

  • After that, locate the box that lets you change your default printer. You are going to want to change it to something with PDF in the name. On my browser it is “Microsoft Print to PDF”.

  • After you’ve selected PDF as your print option, click print. This will prompt a box where you can save the file as a PDF.

  • Now you can add that PDF file to some type of media and take it somewhere to be printed.