Thoughts on Board Game Inserts - Part I

This is a new series that will look at miscellaneous board game topics. The first topic in this series will be board game inserts. My first euro game was Catan, which had a decent plastic insert to hold the hexes and some plastic bags to hold all the player pieces, of which there were not many. However, when I acquired Agricola, it was painful to separate out all the pieces - player pieces, resources, cards - and I longed for a better organization system.

The first thing I tried was buying one of those Plano-style boxes from Michael's. I ended up with two of them due to the sheer number of pieces, especially since I had the Farmers of the Moor and The Goodies expansions. I also had to put one box in the original box and the second one inside one of the expansion boxes. Although this system kind of worked and it was a lot easier than using a bunch of plastic bags, it was not the most elegant. Still, I continued doing this for games that I thought needed the extra organization, such as Le Havre, Galaxy Trucker, and Power Grid.

Now, just to re-iterate, even though I have mostly moved onto other forms of storage, as noted later on, these plastic boxes are very useful. They are very economical as there are a wide variety of places that sell all sorts of boxes and these come in a wide range of sizes. Some have adjustable dividers, which is the most useful of all as you are not stuck just storing bits in the box but can store longer game pieces as well. Simply put, they get the job done and help set-up and clean-up time quite significantly. However, space optimization and organization is still lacking as you are using these boxes not for their intended purpose.

Again, I was chugging along using plastic boxes until the game Dead of Winter came along. Because of the theme and the game being released near the peak of the zombie craze, this game was an instant hit and kept hitting the table consistently. However, set-up and clean-up was a pain with all the plastic bags and I could not find a plastic box solution that worked well for me. Searching the BoardGameGeek forums, I found that several people had made custom foam core inserts for the game. So I went to Michael's again and got all the supplies and tools that I needed to make the perfect insert. I think I cut one piece of foam core and that was it. Although the prospect of creating a custom insert was interesting, I did not have the time and likely the skill to do a good enough job.

(foam core inspiration courtesy of www.inserthere.me - check them out!)

So in this case, I continued using the plastic bags until I stumbled upon The Broken Token. The search was over - pre-cut wood inserts that snapped together (sometimes with a bit of glue for the looser fittings) that looked great and required quite a bit less effort than foam core. Wood inserts are now my go-to solution for any sort of board game organization, with The Broken Token taking precedence over anything else. I'll be looking at some different brands of inserts in the second part of this series, but first I will end this part by asking, does a collection need board game inserts?

If you have the skills, time, and patience to make your own inserts, whether it be foam core or wood or something else, I think it is. Personally, one of the biggest obstacles to gaming is finding enough time to play. A big killer is set-up and clean-up time, so anything that can help speed that along is great in my mind. You also are making your game look that much better whenever you open up your box, putting a big emphasis on the "collectible" side of things. 

However, if you don't have the skills, time, and patience you could go the other route and pay a premium to get pre-cut wood inserts. Many of these can cost as much as the game itself, so sometimes it is quite hard to justify whether money would be better spent on an actual game. For me, the time factor is critical, especially for my favorite games. You could also go the Plano-style box route for a budget-friendy alternative, but I prefer paying the extra for the cleaner look of the wooden inserts. From a collection perspective, it wooden inserts definitely add to the presentation factor every time you open the box.

Inserts are a great thing to have, from a time-saving, organizational and presentation perspective, whether you make them yourself or buy them. However, if you are buying them, especially wooden inserts, you have to consider whether it might add more to your collection to buy a game instead.  I would get them for my most-played and favorite games or games that require extreme set-up or clean-up time, but perhaps limit my insert purchases to an arbitrary one game out of five.