How to Make a Tuck Box That Actually Fits Your Card Deck

Every prototype deserves a box. A deck held together with a rubber band gets bent, loses cards, and looks unfinished on a playtest table. A tuck box (the classic folding card box with a flap at each end) costs one sheet of card stock and ten minutes.

The hard part is the fit. Here's how to get it right.

Why tuck boxes go wrong

Most printable templates you find online are for a standard 54-card poker deck, unsleeved. Your deck probably isn't. It might be 80 cards, or sleeved, or a different size. A box that's 2 mm too narrow won't close; one that's 5 mm too deep lets the cards slide around.

Step 1: Work out the size

A tuck box's inside needs three measurements:

• Width and height: your card size, plus sleeves if you use them, plus a little room.
• Depth: the number of cards times the thickness of each card.

Card thickness depends on the stock. Around 0.31 mm per card is typical for 300 gsm card stock. Sleeves add thickness too, and more width and height.

The tuck box generator does this maths for you: pick the card size, how many cards, and whether they're sleeved, and it sizes the box with a millimetre of room each way so the deck slides in without forcing.

Tuck box generator

Make a printable tuck box for your card deck: pick the card size, how many cards and sleeves, add art for each side, and download a PDF with cut and fold lines or a PNG. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

Step 2: Add art (or don't)

For a first prototype, a plain box with the game's name written on it is fine. If you want it to look the part, add an image to each panel: front, back, sides, top and bottom. Even a single colour and the title in a good font looks deliberate.

The generator lets you add art for each side and pick a colour for the rest, and the images never leave your computer.

Step 3: Print at 100%

Print the PDF on card stock at 100% ("Actual size"). If the box comes out small, your printer is scaling the page; check it once with a test page:

Printer calibration page

Print one Letter or A4 page with a 50 mm square, a poker card outline and rulers to check your printer prints cards at the right size, and learn how to fix it when it doesn’t. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

A box for a standard 54-card deck fits on one sheet of Letter or A4. Bigger boxes split over several pages with an assembly map.

Step 4: Cut, score and fold

1. Cut along the solid outer line.
2. Score the dashed fold lines: run a blunt edge (an empty ballpoint pen or a butter knife) along a ruler on each line. Scoring is what makes clean, square folds.
3. Fold every scored line, firmly, in the same direction.
4. Glue the narrow side tab behind the opposite side panel. A glue stick works; double-sided tape is cleaner.
5. Tuck the lids in at each end. The thumb notch on the front helps slide the cards out.

Sleeved decks

Sleeves add more than you'd think: a millimetre or two to the width and height, and noticeably to the depth. Always tell the generator if your cards are sleeved. If you'll switch between sleeved and unsleeved, size the box for sleeved.

Bigger decks and other sizes

For tarot or mini cards, pick that size in the generator; the box follows. For very large decks (over 100 cards), a tuck box gets floppy. Consider two boxes, or a two-piece lid-and-base box instead.

Make it part of the game

Once you have a box, use it: put the rules sheet inside, write the version number on the bottom, and keep any tokens in a small bag in the box. A prototype that arrives as a complete little package gets taken more seriously by playtesters.

If you're making the whole game in Decklab AI, boxes are a component like cards, tokens and boards, sized from your project and exported with the rest. Need tokens to go in it?

Token and counter sheet maker

Make printable tokens and counters from your images or typed labels: pick round, square or hex, the size and how many of each, and download a print-and-play PDF with cut outlines, or a PNG of each token. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.