A simple strategy to ensure that you’ll be the one who’s warm under the blanket all night. 😉 Yay for board games being very multifunctional.
We received a second gift from our BGG Secret Santa, woooh! The Dunwich Legacy expansion for Arkham Horror the Card Game. We also picked up The Curse of the Rougarou, it’s going to be terrific! I can’t wait for us to make a second run and explore the new scenarios.
Last week we’ve spontaneously started a little project. It includes a wooden chest and board game inlays, I can’t wait to show you guys once it’s finished. But our first experience with making a board game insert certainly was a good one. We’re now enthusiastically going through our board game collection to see what games could really use a smarter inlay for cards and tokens to reduce set up time.
One of those games certainly is Robinson Crusoe. We’ve only just got it and played it twice so far and we didn’t even come close to winning the first scenario. But because the game plays rather quickly, you do somehow want to try again… and again…. and again…. and again.
Rui Martins
SW Imperial Assault and Mansions of Madness are the obvious games in my collection to benefit from insert. I still didn’t make one but it’s a must have now that we are almost finished with painting the Mansions miniatures and about to start with the Imperial Assault ones.
Sean
I need to get around to making inserts for so many games. I think Suburbia is next on my list (I already made one for Castles of Mad King Ludwig), but I need to get the Suburbia Inc. expansion first.
Jake Alexios
I recently scored a deal on Lords of Xidit, and as I was unfurling its diverse and intriguing components, my mind went to Lords of Waterdeep and its diverse components and the simply amazing insert its box has – custom-shaped recessions even have the little divot on the bottom so you can press a corner to have the other pop up for easy access!
But alas, LoX rocks the cardboard trough and proliferation of plastic baggies …
I can imagine that individualized inserts are costly – and can drive up the price of a game as a result – but they’re always such a JOY to behold, especially when I’ve come to not really expect them when I’m first unboxing something new.
I’ve found they even help teach the game: as you take the lid off the box to reveal such a categorized and orderly array, your explanation is structured as you set up the table.
People also seem more inclined to help put things back after playing, as their brains inadvertently regard it as some sort of happy puzzle. “Oop! I’ve got this piece! It goes here…” 😀
Some of my favorites (in addition to Lords of Waterdeep) are:
Takenoko, Elysium, Tokaido, the Big Boxes for Carcassonne and Alhambra, and Colosseum (though, they beautifully account for all components – and even have a key showing what to put where – except the draw bag of resource tiles … which, no matter how hard you try to spread out and flatten on top of the folded up board, always causes that slight top bulge to the box when you put on the top lid! … *sigh!*)
The card trays for Dominion are nice … just DON’T EVER PLACE IT ON ITS SIDE!
You’ll spend an afternoon getting all those cards back into their countless little stacks of 10!
If I were to embark on making custom inserts for my games, I’d start with either Ghost Stories or Above & Below … both are drowning in plastic baggies!
Jeremy
I’ll have to suggest this to my wife—I’m a notorious (albeit unintentional) cover hog.
Galaxy Trucker (with both Big expansions) and Keyflower have the longest set-up times in my collection—both could really use a custom insert (or a custom box, for that matter!). Really excited to see what you’re concocting with your wooden chest/custom inserts—I’d like to do something similar myself, but have no idea where to start.
I’ve had my eye on Robinson Crusoe for about a month now—the Watch It Played playthrough looked really interesting. Care to share your thoughts on it (what you like, what you don’t, replayability, all that good stuff)? The components look top-notch!
Queek
Shadowrun: Crossfire.
Decks plus tokens plus the stickers plus the characters. It’s a nightmare to store.
Honorable mentions also go to Doomtown: Reloaded (especially if you have all of the expansions plus a second core set plus a healthy number of promos), Dominion (because sure, the trays organize the cards, but they don’t do squat for the tokens and mats that come in the expansions) and the original version of Pandemic, though I have to say they did do a characterful job of fixing the storage issue with the first expansion (petri trays, anyone?)
Purple Moose
Above and Below is dying for a nice insert. I guess maybe all Red Raven game really…
SegF4ult
In my experience basically all the Arkham Horror Files games from Fantasy Flight Games deserve/need custom inserts.
The cardboard trough and plastic bags don’t do the games much justice.