Custom Box Inserts Are Awesome

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.

Removing the manuals shows the next set of game boards.

In the case of Shadows Over Camelot 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.

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.

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.

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

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!)

That’s not all I did though, so let me show you some details of the trays.