Presenting… Ninja Astronaut chips and more (2 Viewers)

[Zogster]

So last year I decided that COVID lockdown was a good opportunity to sort out new chips for my home game and, long story short, I got a bit carried away. Spent ages getting chip samples that weren't quite good enough, designing chips, revising my budget upwards… and in the end decided that CPC was the way to go. I spent A LOT more than I'd originally intended, but I'm very happy with the results.

Somewhere along the way I decided that we needed custom cards as well… and maybe a table to go with the chips and cards. Oh, and of course the chips needed a case.

Quick takeaways: if you're not sure whether to spend several times what you'd originally intended on chips from CPC, know that it WILL be worth it; if I was doing this again, I'd probably re-think the colour combo on the 25, as the two dark spots are too similar; making a decent chip case from scratch is actually quite hard (lining properly, aligning catches…); making a decent table or top is probably easier than you think (though adding an LED lighting strip will definitely make it harder).

Also, the custom-printed cloth I used for the table worked beautifully. This stuff: https://www.contrado.co.uk/printing-on-suede-fabric

Cards fly across it, but not too fast, and it handles food and drink stains well (I tested an offcut). Also it was cheaper than any custom printed poker cloth I could otherwise find.

Welcome to the Ninja Astronaut Lounge!

 

[ParrotheadMZ]

Those turned out great. I love when people go with what they like instead of the same old traditional base colors. Great setup.
Now let’s here about those cards!?!?! Price and where you got them.

 

[Pinesol13]

This is incredible. Need the backstory on where Ninja Astronaut came from!

 

[LeLe]

Beautiful Set, nice inlay, loved how you also make customise card to go with it but in Chinese astronaut are 宇航员 but I think you must have gone with 宇宙飛行士 the Japanese Kenji way because of Ninja ?

 

[Zogster]

Thanks!

The cards were from https://www.makeplayingcards.com

Very easy interface on their site for adding your own design, choosing card materials etc. The decks were about $21 each (I ordered 4), and they're good quality plastic. Very happy with those also, definitely got value for money.

[If I'm being very picky, two things that slightly bothered me were 1) the fact that the trimming of the cards left some tiny plastic burrs or similar on some edges, so out of the box they wouldn't handle as cleanly as a new Bicycle deck or decent plastic deck, and 2) the printing is 4-colour CMYK, so areas of solid colour have a dot pattern to them. But it was easy to clean up the card edges, and I think any custom card printing is 4-colour unless you're setting up for a BIG run of cards, and neither of these things stopped me being very happy with the cards.]

The Ninja Astronaut thing is… bullshit, really. A few years ago I just came up with Ninja Astronaut as a sort of smartass label for a simple poker strategy/philosophy that can be summarised as: think like an astronaut, strike like a ninja. I mean, there is *something* to it, in that a good poker strategy should absolutely include the astronaut approach (analytical, mathematical, calm under pressure), and the ninja approach (deception, aggression). So: Ninja Astronaut.

But I've had a lot of fun making some real Ninja Astronaut stuff!

It did take a lot of iterations of both chip and card designs to come up with these - many hours in Illustrator. And the background pattern on the cloth is a traditional Japanese kimono cloth pattern

 

[Zogster]

Beautiful Set nice inlay loved how you also make customise card to go with it but in Chinese astronaut are 宇航员 but I think you must have gone with 宇宙飛行士 the Japanese Kenji way because of Ninja ?

Yes, went with Japanese - and I DID have a Japanese speaker check it!

Also, um, I made a previous run of cards on Bicycle deck stock (there was an offer…) in which the text read "Ninja Astronaut Astronaut" due to a teensy-weensy cut-and-paste error

 

[FordPickup92]

Well this is epic! Nicely done!

 

[Dodger]

These are siiiiick! The whole theme and execution are excellent. Congrats!

 

[Zogster]

Beautiful Set, nice inlay, loved how you also make customise card to go with it but in Chinese astronaut are 宇航员 but I think you must have gone with 宇宙飛行士 the Japanese Kenji way because of Ninja ?

Sorry, should have clarified - yes, I went for Japanese script because of the Ninja thing. Btw, would that Chinese script translate as taichonaut?

For the cards, it was in my mind that the colours were maybe a little more suggestive of Chinese rather than Japanese origin.

 

[Steamtrain]

The 500 is out of this world!

Fabulous set!

 

[Eloe2000]

What are the colors.

That 500 is Arc Yellow base with DG Tiger & DG Orange?

 

[Zogster]

ah, I agree that the 500 works particularly well, thanks!

Yup, bang on with those colours: arc yellow, DG tiger and DG orange

On which note, it was well worth taking the advice (which i may have read here) to order all the colour samples from CPC - made it much easier to make colour decisions and ultimately commit to spending quite so much on chips!

 

[Poker Zombie]

Well done!

 

[Okku]

This is AMAZING!

 

[allforcharity]

The cards were from https://www.makeplayingcards.com

Thanks for the link! I will have to look into this: I've got preliminary art for a custom 54-card deck of Bond actor-themed cards; might be able to do a semi-4-colour deck option for this....

 

[Zogster]

Go for it. They were also good when I had a couple of questions, very helpful.

So would the kings be Connery, Lazenby, Craig and Moore?

 

[allforcharity]

Go for it. They were also good when I had a couple of questions, very helpful.

So would the kings be Connery, Lazenby, Craig and Moore?

Not quite. There's actually potential for 2 separate decks to cover 104 modified actor portraits, but just not sure about the practicality of that. Since I have a "primary" list of 48 portraits across my roulette table and chips, my "secondary" list of 52 actors would be first up for cards. I could possibly be up to running a GB for something like this (in the future), but only if there was enough interest to do at least 50 decks of whatever is produced, and under my design as submitted.

 

[Zogster]

Crikey, that’s a deep dive on Bond casting. Sounds like it’ll go as far as Joanna Lumley and Alan Cumming

 

[BNM]

Nice work! @CarlosStorm for how a little color matching on the inlay goes a long way.

 

[CarlosStorm]

color matching on the inlay goes a long way.

Yes, great job and use of color matching
Unfortunately, I have no inspiration this weekend

 

[Easylife]

Loving the table and over all theme, great looking set. Heads up on the card manufacturer might be handy for the future to. Looks like you're a UK chipper as well, would be good if you could upload your pictures here as well, would be a great addition to the thread Thread 'UK chip sets' https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/uk-chip-sets.81715/

 

[allforcharity]

Crikey, that’s a deep dive on Bond casting. Sounds like it’ll go as far as Joanna Lumley and Alan Cumming

Nope, they didn't make the cut. Do you realize how many actors across the 25 canon movies? 104 doesn't even cover half the possibilities!

 

[johnjohn]

Sir - may I say your inlay design combining ninjas with astronauts was an act of unmitigated gall. I admire gall.

 

[warma]

Lovely “monochrome“ set.

 

[MarkPoint]

This is pretty cool, all of it - with the case / the cards / the table - bravo - impressive