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!

Eldritch Horror - Session Report

SETUP
The prelude brought the Dunwich Horror into play to start the game and each investigator got a spell in return. Since the prelude didn't indicate a specific Ancient One, I randomly picked a card and got Nephren-Ka as the Ancient One. Nephren-Ka uses the Egypt side board, so I had to make some table space, but different is good. He has a TON of cards. Each time there is a reckoning, the investigators move towards the Bent Pyramid spot (on the side board) or lose sanity. I'm playing solo using two investigators, which my starting two are Skids O'Toole and Patrice Hathaway. I've never played with either (that I can recall).

Round 1
Skids O'Toole - focus + move to Amazon (current expedition spot). Skids encounters and defeated the Snake People monster. He joins the Expedition there - they failed looking for the lupuna tree which caused an impairment on observation. Expedition moved to pyramids.
Patrice Hathaway - boat ticket + move to Shanghai. Patrice woke up to Ghouls trying to devour her soul. She got them to stop and they asked her for help with their curse (she gained a task).

Spreading Sickness - When people see your jaundiced skin or hear your loud coughing fits, they avoid you like a leper...
** Must go to Bombay to help stop the sickness (or investigators will lose health at reckonings). This is a fairly easy one to do, just need a couple clues.

Round 2
Skids - focus token + move to city 7. In a graveyard, Skids listens to a spectre's story and regains lost sanity.
Patrice - boat ticket and move to Istanbul. Did some research and gained the clue there. Shuffled the expedition deck (stayed at Pyramids).

Twin Spawn of Cthulhu - A dark force hidden in the southern-most part of the world has turn the Twin Spawn of Cthulhu free...
** Have to kill off both twins or spend clues at reckonings to avoid going insane. This is a harder one in remote areas. It is also going to eat my clues which I need for mysteries. It is also a little funny that I have so many classic things - Cthulhu and the Dunwich Horror going on in the game.

Round 3
Skids - boat ticket + move to San Fran. There is a gate here that Skids wants to close - through the gate Skids encounters his childhood self who screams at the stranger that appeared. His father tries to shoot him, but he wrestles the gun out of his hands and he barely gets away.
Patrice - focus token + move to Bombay. She helps the doctors cure the Spreading Sickness rumor by spending two clues.

All for Nothing - you wrap the towel around some ice and apply it to your injuries, hoping to reduce the swelling...
** Doom advances (so far nothing horrible in the Mythos cards). Reckoning effect moves Patrice from Bombay to the side board into Cairo. Skids moves out of San Fran.

Round 4
Skids - move back to San Fran to try the gate again and gains a focus. Yuggoth - Skids learns how to operate machinery to close the gate!
Patrice - takes lead investigator. Gains a focus + uses banishment spell to rid Sydney of newly spawned monster. In Cairo, she spies on the Brotherhood of the Beast and gains a clue.

Haunting Nightmares cause both investigators to lose sanity and gain a madness condition.

Round 5
Skids - move to Tokyo + "rests" to get rid of madness. In Tokyo, Skids is arrested and gains a detained condition.
Patrice - focus token + "rests" to get rid of madness. She finds a ritual to summon Anubis and end the Black Wind (mystery 1 solved).

Painful Memories wounds each investigator, but the trauma removed their impairments, so the wound was worth it.

The new mystery requires the investigators gain clues from the Egypt board and spend them to solve the mystery. Not so bad, but I am clue poor at the moment.

Round 6
Patrice - moves to Sahara Desert and rests. She is able to find a symbol on a skull and gains a clue (spent on the mystery).
Skids - Detained in Tokyo and can't talk his way out of it. Finally freed after days of questioning.

The End is Nigh - You've pushed everything to the breaking point...
*** Basically lose everything (1 of each kind of thing) and then 1 health and sanity. Skids goes insane. Harvey Walters joins the team as his replacement. That was a rough phase with two gates getting spawned - one due to the Dunwich Horror, two tough spawns and losing all the stuff.

Round 7
Patrice - move to Bent Pyramid + rest. Locusts swarm and she recognizes the attack was from the Brotherhood of the Beast - clue gained and spent.
Harvey - move to London and tries to use his tome (fail). Harvey is invited to look at the Necromicon and becomes delayed (but spawns two clues).

Heat Wave Singes the Globe - loss of health for Patrice and delayed for Harvey (he already was). And of course, more reckonings, gates and doom.

Dumbledore?!?

Round 8
Patrice - moves to Sahara and rests. Through the gate there, she meets an ancient Egyptian warrior that teaches her a chant to work against Nephren-Ka and she closes the gate.
Harvey - was delayed. He gets done with his research but is attacked by a Lloigor and succomns to his wounds. His friend Norman Withers (also from Arkham) joins the party.

The World Fights Back - normally a good event for investigators, but the Cthulhu mystery  expires and causes Patrice to go insane. Doom is down to 1, there are now 7 gates on the board. Tony Morgan joins the investigation team to replace Patrice.

Round 9
Tony - move + focus token. Sees the King in Yellow play and learns a ritual spell.
Norman - move + boat ticket. Meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyale and ends up spawning clues.

Silver Twilight Aid - also should be a good event, but the gates push the doom track and Nephren-Ka awakes. Now, three mysteries have to be solved AND we have to deal with the big bad himself. Not looking good. Each investigator grabs a clue from the aid.


Round 10
Norman - heads to Alexandria. He sees a blasphemous King in Yellow play (it was showing everywhere) and gains a glamour spell from parts of the play.
Tony - moves to South Africa + gains focus token. Plays poker and amazes everyone, gaining an ally.

Curse of Knowledge - investigators lost clues and Norman became cursed. I really needed those clues.

Round 11
Tony - moves to The Nile River + uses his special ability to gain some clues from his focus tokens. He tries to advance the mystery, but he is ambushed by a Spawn of Sebak and then a cultist and fails to advance the mystery.
Norman - tries to use his ritual and fails + grabs a focus. Despite his curse, Norman manages to spy on the Black Brotherhood and steals the Book of the Dead!

And the Mythos phase finishes off the game.

As per my normal M.O. I had too many gates on the board and ended up with too much doom. This time I wasn't avoiding the gates. The monsters that spawned were really not bad to deal with OR were placed somewhere other than the gate location, but I just couldn't seems to get lucky at the right times. I had a good bead on finishing the third mystery, but "ran out of time". Part of that was having to spend clues to fend of the stupid Cthulhu offspring. Even if I had wanted to fight them, they were way out of the way since I needed to be in Egypt focusing on mysteries there. The starting prelude also hurt - the stupid Dunwich horror spawned three extra gates on me. I finally played a game with only investigators I have never tried. None seemed special, but neither were they broken or worthless.

I did find it funny that there was so much other "lore" - Dunwich, Cthulhu, King in Yellow all got mentions despite not really being part of the main story. Good times!

Eldritch Horror - Oh the Horror

Eldritch Horror. Oh how I enjoy this game. This is one of the very few co-op games that I enjoy playing, in large part because of the story. Because of this, I have a fair bit of the expansions (and there is still a fair bit I don't have still). It quickly became apparent to me that the normal storage solution wasn't going to work. In fact, this is a regular question, complaint, or comment from the game's fans - storage is an issue. Even this review of one of the expansions pokes fun at the storage problem facing those brave enough to dive into the game.

My initial plan for storage (after my first big box expansion purchase) was that I took a large FFG box (BattleLore IIRC) and mixed it with the lid from the Mountains of Madness box. This gave me enough storage space that I could create a number of card trays out of foam core and still keep everything together. The result was really good if I say so myself. If I had stopped getting expansions at Mountains of Madness, then I could have lived with the solution. But the expansions kept on rolling out and I had literally maxed out all the space my solution had provided.

As I continued on acquiring more stuff for the game, the replacement plan was a wooden artists box and the Broken Token card system organizer. I kept the small rack I had built out of foam core for the non-condition small cards, but the other cards all moved. The standard cards went into the artist box along with the character cards. This box is a pretty good solution, as there is a space for the boards and manuals as well. Having moved on from foam core to 3D printing, I printed out a set of racks for the condition cards that fit into one of the small box expansions. A box from the Broken Token houses the dice and counters. I ordered a Cthulu rack for the large cards from Etsy and also printed off a bunch of gate stands for the board. The problem? I was out of space - again (I own two large box and three small box expansions currently).

Not only was I out of space, but everything is in 5 different places. The Cthulu rack doesn't fit in anything. All the 3D printed stuff is in a random USPS box I had sitting around, the condition cards are in one box and other stuff in the artist box. Plus the bits in the Broken Token Box. I'm not just at my limit, I'm a little over. The last expansion I got for Carcosa has a at least 9 new types of conditions, which meant the racks I have are no longer sufficient. I could do another set in a small box, but that's just one more box! Time to find a new solution.

So the goals of a new storage system:
* More space for future expansions (currently there are two more big box and one more small box expansion that I don't own). I have no illusions about FFG being done and while I'm not planning to acquire more at the moment, this project seemed like a fun distraction.
* Reduce the number of containers/places that everything exists.

3D printing has been my friend and frankly is better than foam core if for no other reason than you can get good storage systems that have thin walls - millimeters of thickness are starting to matter! So I planned to look for solutions others might have come up with. No luck. Nothing I find really works for what I want to do, so I decide to go a different route than I have before and design my own.

So here is round 1 of the my new design.

I start with an extra AH:TCG (FFG "medium" box size). I decide what I'd like to do is take the rack design from the small box (condition cards) and expand it a bit so there are more spaces. I can make them longer to accomidate the new types of cards. I also have stacks of small cards in my foam rack that I'd like to do something with so I can get rid of my foam core rack. My initial thought (since I'm not a design guru) is to take an existing rack design I've used before and re-size it for small cards. After about 3 tries with the math, I think I get it worked out and using Tinkercad (online) I come up with a model that should be correct and print a few test copies out. They are ok, but not great. First, I only have room for 3 in the box (based on my original concepts that I had sketched out on some paper), but more importantly, they won't hold the stacks well - the stacks are simply too big. The second issue (I realize too late) is that I'd have no room for more cards and no good way to deal with the cards in-game. I really need a single tier rack (like the foam core one I have been using) that takes up less space.

Back to the drawing board. Since the size (width) of the racks was right, I sort of use the basic layout as a template and start chopping it apart until I have a single open sided box. I don't want solid sides mostly because I want to minimize the printed material, so I cut out some holes in the sides and back. I then simply replicate the object and lay them on top of each other so that I'd have a single piece with 4 spaces. Now I had the rack I wanted that would hold the amount of cards I wanted.

In my planning, it appeared that I'd have space for some other things, including what appeared to be enough space for a box to hold the character cards (moving them from the artist's box should free up a lot of space). For this, I started from scratch and just built a pretty simple box and added a "bump" at the bottom to help get the cards out. A friend suggested a put a cutout on the side to make it easier to get the cards out and so I added that too. SOMEHOW I got it right the very first time. The box is exactly the right size (it could be a milimeter taller, so I changed the model, but I'm not going to print another just for that). Now I have two things that don't look like they fit in the box together at all. Well, I mean they do, but its hard to see where I go from here. Right? Well maybe. So I bring my stuff altogether and start planning for the next round. Just for grins, here is a rough idea of what I'm thinking:

huh?

So, stay tuned for round two, because the plan has already changed...

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

Game Bling - Arkham Horror: LCG

Well, it has been forever since I posted about 3D printing and "enhancing games" (or anything about anything really, but I digress). At any rate... let's talk about Arkham Horror: The Card Game. I mean sure, here is a game that is 98% cards (the other 2% being a handful of cardboard tokens), so there must lots this game needs in the way of 3D printed things and other enhancements.

Well as MAGOs know, there should be sleeving! That is a little obvious I think. Maybe you don't think so, but knowing that you'll be shuffling cards and then adding new cards as you progress, I think this is a game where being able to hide the wear on cards to keep from knowing new from old is a reasonable case for sleeving. Yeah, you can probably skip the location cards and such and really just keep it to the player deck cards, but whatever works for you.

Whether you choose to sleeve your cards or not, the next question is -  do you upgrade the cardboard tokens? Here you have a couple of different options,  depending on how much you want to spend. The Broken Token sells acrylic replacements, as does Covenant (and I'm sure there are others too). The Covenant ones are really nice and their player tray sort of sparked this post - I'll get to that in a minute. I already have a nice set of wooden tokens (for Eldritch Horror, but same tokens) from The Meeple Source that I can use, so I am sticking with those.

Of course, there are also the tokens for the draw bag/cup. The GeekCraftShop (again, and others I'm sure), sell custom bags that are both nice and thematic. I actually prefer a digital upgrade here. There is an app called the Arkham Bag (iOS and Google). As far as I know, the app is free on both systems. The Arkham Bag is literally an app that emulates the token cup, eliminating the need for the actual tokens in the convenience of your handheld device! The app is easy to use and while some may not like electronic intrusion, I don't mind in the least.

So, let us go back to the cards for a minute. You would think that a (mostly) card based game would  provide you with a large box and insert to hold everything (like say the Pathfinder Adventure Card games). Well, FFG went the route of smallish box (and the expansions in smaller boxes or blister packs) with no real insert. I could buy one or make one from foam core, but when it comes to making box inserts, 3D printing is the way to go (if you have access to a printer). It is a bit more time consuming than just heading over to [insert your favorite organizer seller] and buying laser cut wood organizers, but you can regularly find all kinds of designs and print them on your own - relatively cheaply from Thingiverse. I found this cool set of insert pieces that fit in the original box. The original design was not made to hold sleeved cards, so I simply widened the card boxes a little and shrunk the width of the middle bins by the same amount to accommodate my sleeved cards.

While searching Thingiverse, I also ran across this nice player tray. It isn't really necessary, but I like the look and idea of it (I need something like this more for Eldritch Horror, but that's a different story). The character card goes in the middle, the columns of squares to either side hold the little resource cubes and the outside hold the magnifying glasses (clues) - all 3D printed of course. The bottom (or top if you spin the tray) hold the health and sanity tokens you have. Maybe not as nice as the Covenant one that got me going on this today, but decent enough (and really a small amount of printing material and a couple hours of printing) that I don't mind not shelling out a ton of money.

And in the category of - I didn't know I needed that! Arrows. A buddy of mine pointed out that having some arrows to point between the locations would be nice to make it easier to figure out travel in the game. I found some, though when I started setting them up to print, I found them to be a bit large. I don't really want to spread out on the table that much. So I shrunk them down so that they were only about 70% as long and 80% as wide. Perfect.

For those that are curious about how to change the sizes - it is pretty trivial. Typically, the files you find for the various print items are some sort of shape file - what you would get from 3D modeling programs. In order to print on your printer, you have to run the shape file through some other program that turns each shape into a set of instructions for the printer so that it can print each layer of the object. Remember, 3D printing is like making a 3D object from toothpaste - you lay down a thin layer of material and after it has hardened, you can build the next layer on top of that and so on. The software I use for our 3D printer is called Slic3r (I guess because it turns the 3D objects into slices). After adding a shape object to the print area in the software, there are a number of options for rotating and resizing the objects. It really is that simple - all you have to do is pick the correct axis to stretch. For stretching boxes that hold non-sleeved cards, it is just a matter of adding about 2-3mm in width.  I simply got out a ruler and started doing some basic math. Easy Peasy.

And her is one more shot of the completed printed player board and the little resource cubes (crates) and magnifying glasses. Can't wait to play again.

Hey - that's it for this round of bling my game! Be sure to check us out at PunchBoard Media!