Eldritch Horror - Return to the Horror

The storage saga continue!

huh?

With my two first parts completed, I pulled out the set of condition racks I've been using to check the fit. The good news is that the plan looks like it'll work - three racks fit perfectly in the space next to the character card box. The issue I'm seeing is that weird middle space (the green box above). My plan was for a box to have two rows of character standees and then just some extra space for stuff plus that space in the middle of the box.

Perfect fit first try

I did some quick measurements and sure enough, a smaller/shorter condition card rack would fit perfectly in that space AND I could still build a box that would hold two rows of character standees. I do a redesign on that box and get the size just right. I print it off and sure enough, it is a perfect fit. The plan is changed (for the better)! I measure the amount of character standees I have and it looks like I should have just over 2/3 of the space used, so some left over for more expansions.

The leftover space should accommodate a five slot short rack for the condition cards - my concern had been that I would be essentially out of slots with the three 11-slot racks. Because I've been doing all this playing around with parts, I get the itch to actually play, so I pull out the game and setup a solo two-investigator scenario. A couple of events get me re-thinking the condition cards. There are a couple of conditions (injuries, madness, etc) that should be lumped together rather than all separated, but the space in the 11-slot racks doesn't really allow that. I decide to design two different short racks. One with five spaces and another with only three. The three will be deeper and allow for groups of conditions.

While I'm staring at my box, I notice something else. The condition card racks were designed for a smaller box (duh), which isn't as tall, so there is a bit of space between the top of the cards and the top of the box. I do some measurements and there is about 15mm of space there. I'm pretty sure that I can fit some kind of player board there if I wanted, so I measure it out and head off to tinkercad.com to work something up. If I make the boards 3.5mm thick, I can easily fit 4 of them in that space under the racks. My design comes together in short order, though I ended up with a few revisions after each round of work.

Turned out decently enough

After creating the whole board, I cut out a space for the cards, basically using the box I built for the cards as a guide for the size. That was easy. Next I want spaces for the ability tokens under the player card. Cutting six slots for those is easy, but I want to be able to get the token out easily so I want half the slot to be deeper so you can tip the little token. That took me a couple tries to get the way I wanted. The extra space on the left looked good for tracking sanity and health. As I was looking at the expansions, I realized that they also added resources, so I designed the board so that you can track all three. Rather than a spot for tickets and clues, I'm just going to put that stuff on the character sheet like I always do anyway.

With the character cards and character standees out of my artists box, I now have enough space that I can drop the Broken Token organizer into one of the rows/columns (whatever) and still have a ton of space for more cards. So far so good. One less thing separate from the other things.

When I finally get around to printing the longer condition rack, I realized after a bit of printing that I had been a little sloppy making the rack in tinkered.com and there is one slot that was a little jacked up. I decided to finish printing and hope I can clean up that slot. I fixed the model for the next print.

I printed the short three-slot rack and group the conditions and put those in. Interestingly, it saves me a ton of slots putting madness in a group and injuries in another. I decide to design a long rack with the wider spaces. I end up printing out another 11-slot rack and then the wide slot rack. Here's the results:

The goal was - make more space for expansions while reducing the number of places that stuff is stored. Mission accomplished. As you can see from this box, there is a lot of space for conditions. I may have to move the artifacts to the small rack so the four-card rack can accommodate more cards. I have a little room still for character standees. Lots of room for character cards. I even designed and now have a couple of player trays! If you are interested in printing this out for yourself, head on over to thingiverse.com to get the files.

Based on the success of this design, I may just go back to the drawing board and think about a full sized box design. We shall see.

Hey! Be sure to check us out at PunchBoard Media!