Glen More

Glen More has arrived, been unpacked, unboxed, unpunched, insert trashed, reboxed into Really Useful Boxes and back into the original box.

Glen More is a game that Dave and Robyn Tatu showed me at TempleCon, and I liked it despite not understanding some of the rules (like turn order, which is clever but a bit confusing).
Due to the confusion, I'm not really going to go into a review until I have a session (even a 2-player one) under my belt.
But it's one of those tile-laying Euro games, similar to Carcassone but with a bit of resource management.

Why did I pick it up? Well, I thought about it at the time, and found out it was out of print. So it recently had a new printing, and I figured I would snatch up a copy (with my dirty VTES auction money) before I lost my chance.

Hope to try it soon (but tonight's PGWJ is destined for BSG)

It's no longer a very Small World, but it's more expensive and faster.

So, I got myself just enough Really Useful Boxes, of various sizes and colors, to pack up Small World in such a way that you can "just pass the race tokens over" to the person who chooses that race; should speed up the game, or at least cleanup.

All in all, my Small World storage now consists of about 40 Really Useful Boxes, including the 17-liter giant box holding everything, including the original box.
I could post some pictures, but they really won't do it justice.

But for reference, this is how big the 17L box is:
http://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/usa/html/onlineshop/rub/b17_0litreUS.php
External: 18 7⁄8" x 15 3⁄8" x 8"
Whereas the original game box is more like 12 x 12 x 4

It's comically huge, but still very much portable in a single coherent unit.

Galactica has a bunch of smaller R.U.B.s now, too, but everything for that still fits inside the Exodus box.

Really Useful Boxes (yet another thrilling post about storage)

Really Useful Boxes are really useful.
Heard about them on boardgamegeek, found out that they have them at OfficeMax, and bought a bunch.
Not completely abandoning tackleboxes and ziplok bags, but Really Useful Boxes come in small enough sizes that it's great for pieces that get passed around (Small World races, if I really want to buy that many), or need to be "put back in the box" frequently (BSG ships).
They also come in gigantic sizes and lots of sizes in between, and they're nicely scaled. But for now, I'm sticking with the smallish ones.

Battlestar Galactica - Storage

Oh boy this is going to be an exciting post! Hold on to your hats!

Back when I first got the Battlestar Galactica game, I was also starting to go through my "tacklebox phase". I was convinced that I needed a way to more-conveniently travel with a large amount of boardgames in tow.

So I purchased a fishing tackle bag that came with 4 Plano 3750 boxes inside.
Moving Small World to this kind of box made sense; with Galactica, it was somewhat forced.
Originally, it looked like this.

When I got Pegasus, I continued the paradigm and rearranged the bits some more. (no picture for this one).

I got a little bit of flak for this, mostly jokingly I think :)

When I got Exodus, I found out a terrible truth: While there was still enough separation of compartments, the Crisis Deck was too tall.
So I decided to un-tacklebox it.

Now, I moved all of the cards to 2 old white card-storage-boxes (one for "Large" and one for "Small" cards; incidentally sleeving the cards along the way), the Cardboard Bits into a VTES 10th Anniversary Tin (to double as a bits-randomizer), the plastic bits in ziploc baggies, and all shoved into the Exodus box.

The box doesn't really close perfectly, but everything does fit in one place now.

By the time the game gets played on Monday, or by TempleCon time, I may have changed my mind again; it makes me a little uncomfortable that the box top doesn't come down so tightly (off by more than an inch), so I might move things to a different sort of 2-box solution.. I might even try to find some Really Useful Boxes instead or something; but still, it looks like the Death of the Tacklebox for this game.

Yeah, aren't you happy you read this? :)

Bits and Boards and the Art of Fly Fishing

You may remember that I went out and bought a fishing tackle bag, with space for 4 Plano 3750 tackleboxes, in order to cart around my game bits.
The plan was to keep all of the boards, rulebooks, and larger bits for 3-4 games in one single box, and carry around the bits separately.

Especially with my last influx of games, this plan has kind of been neutralized.

Small World was really the impetus for the plan, and most of its current bits still fit in one tackle box, but there are enough large lumps leftover that I've brought back its box (but not the insert) to keep all of its own stuff separately.

I kinda forced Galactica into the plan, but now that I have Pegasus, the tacklebox has definitely filled out a bit. If I wanted to go to the effort of printing up 100 little tuckboxes, I could throw all the cards into the box, but as it stands, the Pegasus box is just the home for the boards, books, and character sheets.
This one may have to be modified in short order, as soon as get my grubby hands on Exodus.

The third of the original tackleboxes found a home when I brought home Power Grid. Not only does Grid have a lot of bits that need to be separated, but the box is exactly the right size to fit a Plano 3750 inside it. Was a very cool discovery.

The fourth original tacklebox still has a lot of my VTES counters of various types in it, but is bound to get repurposed someday.

I'm just thankful that Pandemic, with its expansion, fit in the original box which is smaller than one of these tackleboxes to begin with. Good on Z-Man games for providing some pretty awesome storage stuff (as well as shrinking the pawns down and re-issuing a full set) in the expansion box.

And ah yes, Dominion.. I've just finished sleeving the whole of Alchemy and Prosperity; everything fits in just the original box (with some slight modifications) and the Alchemy Box (with its insert; the "starting cards" fit nice and snugly here).

I can't wait to actually play some of these games again, after spending so much time storing the bits.. :)