This study systematically characterises a matrix of water-based flexographic inks with respect to their rheology, surface tension and wetting of liquid packaging board, to provide a basis for interpretation and prediction of their printing performance. For all pigment and acrylate polymer vehicles and mixing proportions the inks were shown to be shear thinning and thixotropic, with plastic viscosity, yield stress and storage and loss moduli increasing strongly with content of solution polymer (at comparable solids contents). The solution polymer decreases the static surface tension of the inks, but generally leads to an increase in their equilibrium drop contact angle on the polyethylene- (PE-) coated board due to increase in the ink-board interfacial energy. The solution polymer also decreases the drop spreading rate, and a simple model is tested to express the spreading dynamics in terms of equilibrium contact angle and a rate parameter given by the effective ratio of surface tension to viscosity.