Custom Box Inserts Are Awesome

One of the first things I notice when opening a new game is how is the box insert designed. Is it cardboard? Plastic? Are there dedicated spots for tokens and game bits so they don’t go all over the place? How well does the game fit back into the box after everything has been punched? Does the insert handle sleeved cards? How well is the game box designed (or not) to handle future expansions?

The good news is that I enjoy creating new box inserts. It’s yet another way I get to enjoy my hobby. In this post I’m going to show the results of one effort but not go into a lot of details as to the “how” things were done. I’ll have more posts on that later. For now, I just want to show off. 😎

The game under consideration for this post is Shadows Over Camelot. The original insert was plastic. It had various buckets for cards and game tokens, and a larger area that was designed to hold plastic trays for the knights and their opponents. The card slots were not big enough for sleeved cards though, and the plastic trays for the knights were missing from my version of the game which I bought used. That meant all of my knights were jumbled in a big mess.

I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of the pre-painted knights offered for this game, and I certainly didn’t want them jumbled around with everything else! I wanted them to be protected in their own individual compartment. I am in the process of painting the remaining components for the game, and I also want them to be protected.

I sleeved the cards, so my new insert had to be able to handle the larger storage requirements.

I will often try to design an insert that streamlines the setup process, but that was less of a concern for this game since there are only two decks of cards to start with.

With that in mind, here’s how my insert turned out.