I'm currently in the process of designing a boardgame. And at some point I need to design and print about 100 cards with different text and attributes. The game is only for myself and perhaps 3-4 friends, so we are talking perhaps 400 cards in total.

I'm thinking, if I design the card(s) in InDesign, and then use some sort of XML data merge - it should be possible to quickly change and alter the basic layout, without having to redesign each card.

But Im still quite new to using InDesign in the first place, so I could really need some help and advise as to how to do this.

If any of you InDesign-gurus could guide me in the right way I would very very much apreciate it.

I was thinking of making a Excelfile with all the text and data for each card, and then - somehow - make a template in InDesign, import the Excel data and then print it all.

Is there a way to design a page so that I can print several cards (70mm x 50mm) on one A4 (still with datamerge in mind)?

Am I totally wrong if I want to use Excel and InDesign, or should I perhaps use some other software for this ?