{"id":376,"date":"2018-10-03T08:05:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T13:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/?p=376"},"modified":"2019-09-07T09:19:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-07T14:19:24","slug":"custom-box-inserts-are-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/03\/custom-box-inserts-are-awesome\/","title":{"rendered":"Custom Box Inserts Are Awesome"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>? Does the insert handle sleeved cards? How well is the game box designed (or not) to handle future expansions?<\/p>\n

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. \ud83d\ude0e <\/p>\n

The game under consideration for this post is Shadows Over Camelot<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> for the game, and I also want them to be protected.<\/p>\n

I sleeved the cards, so my new insert had to be able to handle the larger storage requirements.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, here’s how my insert turned out.
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\"Shadows<\/a>
Shadows Over Camelot Insert Manuals<\/figcaption><\/figure> Here’s what I see when I open the box. The manuals are right on top. This serves two purposes. First, I often need to review the rules in order to make sure I get the game set up correctly. Second, the manuals (and game boards, if any) serve as a “lid” of sorts for the remaining components that are underneath.<\/p>\n

Removing the manuals shows the next set of game boards.
\n

\"Shadows<\/a>
Shadows Over Camelot Insert Additional Boards<\/figcaption><\/figure> In the case of Shadows Over Camelot<\/em> there are additional game boards for the Grail Quest, Excalibur Quest and the Lancelot \/ Dragon quests. They go under the manuals. After that comes the main game board.
\"Shadows<\/a>
Shadows Over Camelot Insert Game Board<\/figcaption><\/figure> The way I designed my insert the boards rest on top of the compartments for the various game tokens. When the box lid is shut and the game placed on my shelf, everything sits nice and tight.<\/p>\n

\"Shadows<\/a>
Shadows Over Camelot Insert Upper Layer<\/figcaption><\/figure> Here’s the best part of my design, I think. My game boxes are stored vertically on shelves. The picture here shows the knight tray (and the currently empty Picts \/ Saxons tray). These were designed so that when the box is flat, everything lies flat. When the box is vertical, each knight is “standing up” on his base! I was really proud of that design detail, because it is going to be a lot of work to paint everything (even if I cheated by buying the pre-painted knights) so having everything rest on a base (instead of sideways) made me very happy.<\/p>\n

Finally, with the trays removed, here’s what the bottom of the box holds.

\"Shadows<\/a>
Shadows Over Camelot Insert Lower Layer<\/figcaption><\/figure> The lowest level of the box contains the knight cards, the loyalty cards (because there were only seven of those, I didn’t make the effort to create a special compartment just for them) and the swords. The empty compartment on the top right is going to be used for the Merlin cards, should I ever be lucky enough to find a reasonably-priced copy of the expansion. (Update: I did<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

That’s not all I did though, so let me show you some details of the trays.
\n
\nHere is a close-up of the knights tray.

\"Shadows<\/a>
Shadows Over Camelot Insert Knights Tray<\/figcaption><\/figure> Each knight has a special compartment that is just for them. I designated that by putting colored felt on the bottom of the foam-core tray. The center part is designed for the dice. In this picture the Holy Grail is occupying a spot that will eventually be filled by the Merlin figure (I hope). If not, I am going to use one of my old D&D miniatures for the Black Knight instead.<\/p>\n

\"Shadows<\/a>
Shadows Over Camelot Insert Catapult Tray<\/figcaption><\/figure> The catapult tray picture also shows a felt lining, green in this case. I originally planned to have a separate compartment for every catapult and eventually decided that (a) that was overkill and (b) it would be next to impossible to get fingers into the tray to pull them out. I went with four compartments of three catapults each instead.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the tray for the Picts and Saxons will be finished out, and the three trophies (Grail, Armor and Excalibur) will have their own unique compartments as they will all be painted. I’ll come back and post pictures of the final product once I’m finished. For now, I wanted to show what was possible with a little foam-core, a sharp knife, a ruler and a bottle of glue. I’ll post more about the construction process at some point in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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? … Continue reading “Custom Box Inserts Are Awesome”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-inserts","category-modifications","tag-shadows-over-camelot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}