Board Game Storage: Catan

As I've mentioned previously, Settlers of Catan was the game that started it all for me as it was the first modern board game I purchased.  (I actually can't remember if I purchased it or it was a gift. Regardless.)  This was back in 2005 and the game was clearly gaining traction but you couldn't find it in Barnes and Noble yet; there was still a bit of a niche aspect to it.

To make the game more profitable for its producers, it was sold in a very modular style: the basic game played four players and you could buy an expansion that would allow you to add two more players.  In fact, each major expansion (Cities and Knights, Seafarers, and Barbarians and Traders) has progressed in this two-fold manner. About the time I owned the the base game and Cities and Knights for up to six players I realized I had a serious storage problem.  This was one game (at least in my mind) spread across four boxes with a lot of empty space in each box; it was time to consolidate. Over Christmas back in Portland I picked up an art box and six treasure chests and began the process.

I found some powdered dye online in the same six colors as the Catan pieces for each player and with a little bit of trial and error, was able to color the six treasure chests to match.  This very minor innovation has been the creative foundation of the storage system and continues top impress other Catan players when I bring out my set for us to play.

In fact, until last year, that first version of the Catan box worked quite well.  I kept the cards, tiles and border pieces in rubber bands (which often broke and were replaced), the chips in little plastic bags and each player's game pieces in a colored wooden treasure chest.  Life was reasonably good; everything fit snuggly in that art box.

Then Traders and Barbarians came out and I had a problem. Though it was a tight squeeze I was able to fit all the player pieces in the existing treasure chests.  (No more haphazard dumping of the pieces back in, though; now they had to be meticulously stacked to fit.  I consider this the after-game game and most of my fellow players agree.)  The rest of the new cards, tiles, and pieces were a no-go, though, and the only solution was a bigger artbox.  I made a trip to Hobby Lobby and picket up a larger box along with a few other sub-boxes and with a bit of organizational effort, found a way to make it work.

The last piece of the organizational puzzle was tuck-boxes: folded pieces of card stock assembled to form a box. I had already been making tuck-boxes for my the box I was using to store Carcassonne and  when I decided to apply the idea to my Catan box.  The tuck-boxes  allowed me to keep the cards and pieces for each expansion separate and easily accessible.  In fact, I stumbled across some very professional tuck-box designs for storing the resource hexes and with the help of FedEx Office (which will always be Kinko's in my mind), printed and folded these nifty little creations.

And here is the final product, packed and opened up for a fuller view:

The wooden box in the upper left contain my custom color-coded tuck-boxes for the cars of the various expansions (black for Catan, green for Cities and Knights, and red for Traders and Barbarians).  The box in the top right is entirely devoted to just some of the new pieces in Traders and Barbarians; the golden men (barbarians, I think) and camels are their own boxes down below on the far right.  The fancy "professional" hex tuck-boxes are in the center with the hex markers in their little boxes to the far right.  (I've sorted those markers into the four-player and six-player variant with the Seaside pieces also on their own). Along the bottom are the colored treasure chests for the player pieces and the slot in the top of the box contains the rules and the border pieces (not very visible).

There are a few minor changes I'd like to make to this set-up.  Since my original game is the older artwork and style, I have more ocean hexes than the newer version and there is no tuck-box for them. I might just print out another page of the ocean hex tuck-box and put them in in that.  The cardboard boxes on the right outside the box are not marked on the outside so there is also a bit of guess-and-check to find the appropriate pieces; something needs to change about that.

It is true that the box is large (16.5" x 13" x 4.5") and heavy but it all fits and relatively compactly as well.  The game doesn't travel back to Portland on the airplane any more but I've indoctrinated my family enough into modern board games that they have plenty of their own now. Of the three "custom" storage boxes I've done so far, the evolution of this box has been the most involved and demanding from a design standpoint.  But its done (more or less) and I like it.

Gotta love those treasure chests, too.