Two manufacturers can quote the same game and still be pricing two different products.
That sounds obvious, but it happens more often than people expect. A quotation may say “300 cards, one game board, two punchboards and one insert,” yet leave out the details that actually drive cost and production risk. What card stock is being used? Is the punchboard varnished or laminated? Are the cards going into the insert sleeved? Is the box being sized around the finished production stack-up, or only around the first prototype?
Until those questions are answered, comparing unit prices is not really comparing like with like.
From the manufacturing side, that is where we would start. Not with “Who is cheapest?” but with a simpler question:
Are all of the suppliers quoting the same game?
Make Sure the Specification Is Actually Comparable
A useful quotation should tell you enough to understand what you are buying.
For paper components, that means more than writing “premium paper.” For plastic parts, “plastic” may be acceptable during an early RFQ, but it cannot remain the final production specification. Before production is released, materials, dimensions, quantities, printing, finishing and packing all need to be identifiable. Sunday Games uses the same principle internally: a quotation is not treated as the final production specification, and mass production is released only after the approved sample or specification, Final BOM and approved production files are locked.
This distinction matters because quotations are made while a project is still moving. Specifications change. A prototype reveals something unexpected. A customer decides to sleeve the cards. A miniature needs a structural adjustment. A box that was originally large enough suddenly is not.
If one supplier has included those changes and another is still pricing the old version, the cheaper quote may simply be incomplete.
That is why one of the first things we would ask a publisher to do is put the quotations side by side and compare the actual specification line by line, not only the price at the end.
Look at Games Similar to Yours, Not Just a Sample Shelf
A manufacturer may show beautiful printed boxes and cards and still be the wrong partner for a game with miniatures, custom plastic parts, layered punchboards and a complicated insert.
The important question is not:
“Can they make board games?”
It is:
“Have they handled the difficult parts of a game like mine?”
If your project is mostly cards and a tuck box, print consistency and card finishing may deserve most of your attention. If the game contains molded components, the risk shifts. Tooling, material selection, shrinkage, assembly and fit become much more important. A miniature-heavy game creates a different set of questions again.
We see this clearly in our own production standards. Cards, punchboards, boards, trays, dice, wooden pieces, miniatures and plastic parts do not share one generic QC checklist. The inspection focus changes by component: miniatures are checked for missing material, deformation, flash, assembly and base stability, while plastic parts also require attention to molding completeness, shrink marks, cracking and functional fit.
So when reviewing a manufacturer, ask for examples that are genuinely relevant to your game. If your insert is critical, inspect finished inserts. If you have miniatures, look at production miniatures rather than only resin presentation samples. If your game contains many SKUs or language versions, ask how those are controlled during assembly.
A good portfolio should answer questions, not just look impressive.
DFM Is Where Many Expensive Problems Should Be Found
One of the most useful things a manufacturer can do happens before the factory starts making anything.
It is the production review.
At Sunday Games, the pre-production review is used to lock the current artwork, dielines or 3D files and identify risks involving printing, structure, color, assembly and manufacturing before the project moves into sampling. Special card sizes, double-layer or unusual punchboards, complex trays, miniatures and custom molded parts are specifically the kinds of items that trigger deeper review.
This is where real manufacturing experience becomes visible.
A tray is a good example. It can look perfectly sized in CAD and still be wrong when the actual game arrives. Sleeved cards take more room than bare cards. Components need tolerance. Players need enough finger clearance to remove pieces. The way components stack and the direction they enter the box also matter. Our current engineering standard explicitly asks designers and production teams to consider sleeve thickness, component tolerances, finger access, stacking and packing direction when reviewing a tray.
The same principle applies elsewhere.
A folding board is not only an artwork file with folds drawn on it. The folds have to work with the construction and with the artwork around the crease.
A punchboard is not simply “printed greyboard.” Token size, token spacing, board size, die-cutting and surface treatment interact with each other.
A miniature is not ready for production just because the 3D model looks good on a monitor.
When comparing manufacturers, pay attention to the questions they ask before quoting and sampling. A supplier that identifies an uncomfortable issue early is often more useful than one that immediately says everything is possible.
A Sample Is Only Useful If You Know What It Represents
Samples create confidence, but they can also create false confidence.
You need to know what you are approving.
Was the sample produced using the intended material? Is the printing process representative of mass production? Is it a white sample for structural confirmation, a digital proof for artwork review, a component sample, or a complete production-representative sample?
We separate those purposes internally because “sample approved” is too vague to be useful on its own. Before a sample is released, the sample BOM, file version, validation purpose and quantity need to be clear. Sample files must be locked, and the team needs to know exactly what the sample is intended to prove.
That distinction becomes especially important when a sample is modified.
Suppose you approve a box, then change the insert. The box may still be approved visually, but the assembled packaging system has changed. If the new insert affects height, component arrangement or pressure inside the box, the original approval may no longer represent the finished product.
Our workflow treats post-approval changes as new changes rather than silently carrying the old approval forward. If a modification affects the representativeness of the sample, the affected item is re-sampled and checked again.
When you evaluate a manufacturer, ask how they record approvals and revisions. “We have your latest files” is not a version-control system.
Materials and Finishing: “Better” Is Not Always Better
This is an area where generic advice often becomes misleading.
A more expensive material or finish is not automatically the better choice.
Take punchboards. Lamination may sound like an upgrade because it adds a protective film, and on many printed products it can be an excellent choice. But a punchboard is die-cut through many edges. Lamination introduces another consideration: the film can lift around those cut edges.
For that reason, our current standard punchboard configuration uses 250gsm CCNB + 1.5mm greyboard + 250gsm CCNB with matte varnish. Lamination is not treated as the automatic “premium” option; if a project requires it, the process is reviewed first.
Cards show the same principle from another angle.
Our quotation default for cards is currently 300gsm Art Paper, 4/4C printing and playing-card varnish. Depending on the desired feel and opacity, a project may move to White Core, Blue Core or Black Core stock. But by the time the project reaches production, “standard card stock” or “premium stock” is not enough—the actual approved stock has to be written into the production specification.
Color also deserves more care than a percentage pulled from a generic specification sheet.
For color-sensitive work, our current priority is an approved physical sample or customer-defined color standard first, then a physical Pantone reference, then an approved proof. A monitor preview sits lower in that hierarchy because displays are not reliable production color standards. We also do not use a casual percentage such as “5% color difference” as a contractual acceptance limit unless a measurement method has actually been defined.
These are the kinds of conversations worth having with a manufacturer. Not “Do you offer premium materials?” but:
Why are you recommending this material for this component?
What changes if we choose the alternative?
How will we approve the difference before production?
Quality Control Needs an Approved Reference
“Strict QC” is easy to put on a website.
The more useful question is:
QC against what?
For us, the highest project-specific reference is the customer-approved written specification or physical sample. Approved production files and the Final BOM define the final content, materials, versions and packaging. Company standards fill gaps where necessary, but they do not replace a stricter customer-approved requirement.
That is a more practical way to think about quality control than starting with a generic tolerance table.
For example, if the approved sample has a particular card feel, the material in production needs to correspond to the approved specification. If a wooden piece is approved in a certain shape and finish, inspection should compare production against that basis. If a game has several languages, QC must confirm that the correct language components are being assembled together.
Sunday Games’ current QC guideline deliberately does not impose one universal AQL, one fixed Critical/Major/Minor definition, or one set of dimensional tolerances on every product. Where a customer or third-party inspection plan specifies an AQL or sampling plan, that approved project standard is followed. Otherwise, inspection is based on the project risk, batch, approved reference and actual component requirements.
This is worth asking any potential supplier about.
If they tell you they use a standard AQL, ask what the defects are being measured against. If they tell you everything is checked “100%,” ask what is actually being checked and recorded.
The quality system should be able to show you the reference, the inspection result and what happens when something does not match.
Pay Close Attention to the Handoff From Sample to Mass Production
This is one of the areas we would pay the most attention to if we were choosing a manufacturer ourselves.
A good sample does not guarantee good mass production.
The dangerous moment is the handoff between the two.
By the time we release a project to mass production, the approved sample or specification, Final BOM, approved artwork/3D/dielines, quantity, packing requirements and any required testing plan should all be locked and traceable. If the final files are still changing, if the approved sample conflicts with the BOM, or if an unresolved packaging issue remains, production should not be released.
Version control is particularly important in games because there may be many files that look almost identical.
One card deck changes language.
One miniature is revised.
A rulebook receives a final correction.
A token sheet moves two pieces.
Those are small changes individually, but using one old file in mass production can affect thousands of games.
Our internal rule is that there should be one identifiable current approved version in the production path. Superseded files are removed rather than left available for somebody to choose accidentally.
Ask a prospective manufacturer how they handle this handoff.
Who releases the job to production?
How are revised files identified?
How are sample changes transferred into the final BOM?
What happens when the approved sample and the latest artwork disagree?
The answers tell you a great deal about how the project will be managed once it becomes too expensive to improvise.
Compare the Complete Scope, Not the Headline Unit Price
Once the technical scope is clear, price becomes much easier to compare.
A complete comparison may include:
- Prototypes and samples
- Printing and components
- Tooling or molds
- Assembly
- Packaging
- Testing
- Freight
- Special labeling or fulfillment requirements
Injection-molded parts are a simple example. A low unit price may still sit on top of significant tooling cost. A game with several custom molded parts should therefore be evaluated differently from a mostly paper-based game.
Assembly should not disappear inside another component price either. In our RFQ system, complete-game projects carry a separate assembly line, while special sorting, labeling or complex packing requirements are recorded because they may affect labor and cost.
Schedule deserves the same treatment.
A realistic plan needs time for file review, sampling, approval, material preparation, tooling where required, production, QC, assembly and packing. More components usually mean more dependencies. If the promised lead time looks unusually short, ask which stages have been shortened and why.
And plan shipping early. Final packing decisions affect carton dimensions, palletization, labels, fulfillment requirements and freight cost. These questions are much easier to solve before the games are packed.
The Questions We Would Ask Before Choosing a Manufacturer
If we had to reduce the decision to a short conversation, these are the questions we would want answered clearly:
- Have you produced games with the same difficult components as mine?
- What exactly is included in your quotation, and what is still assumed or TBD?
- What will you review during DFM before sampling or tooling begins?
- What does each sample represent, and how are revisions recorded?
- What approved reference will production and QC be checked against?
- Who controls the final BOM and approved file versions before mass production?
- What happens when a production result does not match the approved standard?
- How are assembly, packing and shipping requirements included in the project plan?
A strong manufacturer does not need to give you the answer you expected to every question.
Sometimes the most useful answer is:
“We need to review that before we can confirm it.”
Manufacturing involves trade-offs. Materials interact with processes, components interact with packaging, and changes made in one place can affect cost or timing somewhere else.
The manufacturer you want is not the one that agrees with everything fastest.
It is the one that can explain what is known, what still needs to be tested, and what must be locked before production begins.
