I don’t remember where I learned this, or I would give that person / website / video credit. All I know is once I saw it I thought to myself, “That’s brilliant!” And I’ve done it ever since.
Earlier today I opened my copy of Dead of Winter: The Long Night. I’ll have a full un-boxing post coming up soon, but I wanted to write a quick post that talks about what to do with those empty token boards once you’ve punched everything out. One option is to toss them in the trash (or hopefully recycle them, if your neighborhood offers that option). I’m going to suggest something different: put them back in the box!
“What? 😕 ,” you say, confused. “I just got rid of all of the tokens, why would I bother putting the empty stuff back in my box?”
I have a slide show at the end of this post to show this visually, but think about this for a minute. The box and insert were designed to contain the entire game in the original un-punched form. When everything was stacked in the box it was nice and snug, right?
Once you take out the boards (The Long Night had eight), there’s a gap. I enjoy creating custom inserts for my games out of foam core and other materials, but until I get a design built I would rather have my game contents not sloshing around inside the box. Here’s the trick: remove the existing game insert, and put all of the empty token boards underneath it!
Return the original game insert to the box, and notice the “box gap” has been substantially reduced. In fact, it should be just about the perfect amount of space left to store the game board. Nice. 😎
Don't Recycle Punched Game Boards
This technique has worked every time I have used it. It worked for the original Dead of Winter (which I have since removed because I build a custom insert), Five Tribes and a host of other games. Ultimately I prefer having (and enjoy making) custom foam core inserts, and I’ll have some examples of those coming up soon. But this is a quick and easy trick that helps keep your games organized.