blaugust

A big challenge involved with board games is organization and storage. Imagine for a moment that your Steam games library required physical space. After buying a game or ten during one of Valve’s insane sales, and hopefully playing the- sorry I can’t even finish typing that without laughing, you then had to figure out where to store it. Now add the additional challenge of organizing the pieces of the game inside the box. While some board games come with good inserts, most do not. Pathfinder Adventure Card Game and Marvel Legendary are two pretty good inserts, but after three expansions the Marvel Legendary one will literally not fit one more card.

The Lord of the Rings Living Card Game from Fantasy Flight just came with a basic cardboard insert, nothing fancy but nothing worse than what an average game comes with. Unfortunately there was no thought given by FF for expansions and LotR the LCG has had a lot of expansions. The original core game started with 226 cards. Add to that 3 Deluxe Expansions, 3 Saga Expansions, 3 full Adventure Pack Cycles, and half of a fourth and the current card count is now 2,290 card. Once the current Cycle finishes and the next announced Deluxe and Saga Expansions come out the card count will be 3,026.

Initially for storage I tried a plastic organizer, but I wasn’t happy with the results. There was a lot of wasted space in the box and the cards were loose enough that I worried about them getting bowed (something that’s been and issue with my Pathfinder insert). Plus I didn’t like losing the art for the original box.

Months later, I ran across mention of a company that does custom inserts for games called The Broken Token. Their kits are laser cut from thin wooden sheets and they have a nice once that works with any of FF’s card games either sleeved or unsleeved. It would allow me to reuse my LotR LCG box and was only $19, so it was well worth a try.
I got the organizer today in a flat envelope. The kit contained some directions and four sheets of wood. Assembly only took me about 15 minutes and no tools. From looking at the instructions that can vary a little bit since sometimes the pieces need to be trimmed slightly, but I had no issues with mine. It actually took me longer to get all of the cards organized and into the box than it did to put the kit together.

 
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The insert allowed me to take the original box and a stack of Expansions, plus the plastic case of Adventure Packs above and condense it all into the original box.

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While I’m super happy with how easy it was to put together and how well it’s organized my game, I’m also about out of room in the original box. Plus I don’t have room in it now for the threat counters and tokens necessary to play the game. So when the remaining three Adventure Packs and two Expansions come out, I’m definitely not squeezing them in. One option would be to get a binder with card pages in it like a Pokemon or baseball card collector uses. Another option is a larger box and organizer. That one is quite a bit more expensive but looks very nice.

It may be odd, but I think organizing board games is an interesting aspect of the hobby. There’s a lot of room for creative solutions either with third-party products like Broken Token’s or DIY crafts like foam core inserts.

Day 30 of Blaugust

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately playing the app versions of board games. Especially a few of the competitive 2-player ones like Star Realms and Summoner Wars. I bought the Master Set for Summoner Wars at GenCon last year but never got a chance to play it, and I’d been eyeing the iTunes App Store jealously for months because Playdek had an app version of the game but wasn’t supporting Android until recently. Star Realms is one of the hot games right now, so when I found out about it no one had a copy in stock. While I was waiting on a restock to come in, I found that they had an app and shockingly it was available on Android and not on iOS yet. So I actually played Star Realms for a couple of weeks before my physical copy showed up while I was down at GenCon.

Star Realms is done in Unity, which is why was available for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac. The original iOS delay was due to the normal Apple approval delay. For $5 you get access to the game on all four platforms and can play games against anyone regardless of what device they’re on. That’s a pretty good deal. Summoner Wars isn’t Unity, so supporting multiple platforms is a lot more work (or so I imagine). The app is free with in-app purchases to unlock additional factions, I went with a bundle that unlocked them all for $8, and have been enjoying the game a lot.

It appears that the board game apps trend is picking up more momentum. Paizo announced a partnership with Obsidian just before GenCon to bring their Pathfinder Adventure Card Game to devices. Fantasy Flight is developing a game based on Battlelore : Second Edition, a miniatures game I’ve wanted to get but haven’t because I knew I’d rarely get to play it. Czech Games is making an app version of Galaxy Trucker, and Handelabra Games is making a digital version of Sentinels of the Multiverse. Even cooler is that two of these games Battlelore Tactics and Sentinels of the Multiverse: the Video Game are already announce for both iOS and Android. The Pathfinder teaser site doesn’t say anything about platforms, but they were demoing the current prototype on iPads at GenCon, and the Obsidian person I talked to said it was being developed in Unity, so I expect it will come to Android as well. Czech Games has stated that they are developing for multiple platforms but are planning to release on iOS first and then other platforms.

While I do enjoy the analog experience of board games, it’s hard to beat the convenience of the app versions of games. Not only can I play with people regardless of location, I can have multiple asynchronous games going at once.

Day 27 of Blaugust