Tag Archive: inserts

Foamcore Insert: Discworld Ankh-Morpork

23rd November 2017 4 Comments

This is a major learning process and I knew I didn’t have the skills required starting out to do this one justice, so I saved it for game number 4! Discworld Ankh-Morpork (unfortunately out of print since the death of Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld books) is one of my very favourite games (only one that gives it competition is Cosmic Encounter!) so I wanted to do right by it. After learning a bit about removable parts of inserts while doing my Codenames insert, and my Mysterium insert I decided I wanted to incorporate that idea into Ankh-Morpork too in order to speed up set-up and improve the use of table space. I started out by making a base box that fits into the main box with a sizeable notch to put the gameboard and instruction manual into. Very happy with the cleanliness of the cuts here! Step 2 was to see how things fit into the box. Here you can see me brainstorming a bit. I want to keep each category listed below separated in the box. The core component categories are: Each player’s coloured pieces (12 minions and 6 buildings each) 12 trouble markers 4 Demons…
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boardgames

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Foamcore Insert: Codenames

16th November 2017 0 Comments

This one turned out extremely well! I improved my cutting technique, so I don’t have the rough edges of my Mysterium insert and I made the angles a bit less of a headache than in my Avalon insert. The big strength about this insert is that it reduces setup time to…nearly zero. You take the card box and main insert out of the box, plonk them in front of the spymasters and lay out the cards. Makes for nice quick cleaning up too. Inspiration drawn from Gonzalo Viqueira over on Boardgamegeek. He provided plans and measurements too which…I didn’t even look at apart from seeing that he cuts angled notches to support the floors, which, after Avalon, I had no intention of doing! Below is how I reduced my angled insert headache. I cut and measured supporting triangles to rest the flat parts on rather than cutting slots in the walls to slide them into. Waaaaay easier! Some close-ups. I messed up the draw-box for the main cards by initially cutting notches in the wrong side of the box, so I had to cut notches in all the sides, but it still works fine and has the advantage of being able to…
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boardgames

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Foamcore Insert: The Resistance Avalon

9th November 2017 0 Comments

  No in-progress shots of this one, unfortunately. I learned a lot of lessons from my Mysterium insert and I’m much happier with the finish on this one, though I do have some unfortunate glue spill-over around some of the joins. The big challenge with this insert was the angles for the separators for the big cards – major heartache getting those right! Inspiration from Mike Holzman over on Boardgamegeek, but I added the angled piece for the Lady of the Lake and Crown cards which allows them both to be seen at once. My core desire for this insert was that I wanted as many different components as possible to be visible at once to allow for easy grabbing. I’m very happy with how this one turned out, it lets you see all the components in one go and keeps everything nice and separated for a quick and easy set-up and teardown.     

boardgames

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Foamcore Insert: Mysterium

7th August 2017 0 Comments

Mysterium is a very enjoyable cooperative game that combines Cluedo with…Pictionary? One player is the ghost and gives clues to the other players about each player’s unique combination of murderer, location, and weapon to solve the crime. The ghost player cannot speak though – they must give their clues by presenting the other players with “vision” cards. These cards are super trippy and oblique. It’s a fun game and always great to get to the table. Setup, however, is an absolute pain in the ass, as the insert doesn’t seem to be designed with specific locations for the “board” (there’s not really a full board, just several short strips to divide up the person-place-weapon cards on the table), so there’s a lot of fiddling and splicing decks of cards together. I set out to change this. Drawing inspiration from this box insert available for purchase online, I wanted to use removable trays to keep everything in a state of readiness in the box. I diverged from that one by making a “ghost tray”, so almost all the ghost’s kit is kept together, meaning it can be handed over to that player with a minimum of fuss. The one part of the…
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boardgames, making

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New Obsession: Foamcore boardgame inserts

30th July 2017 0 Comments

cutting foamcore

Some boardgames are a pain to set up with multiple bags of tokens to hand out to players, draw decks to separate out and place around the board, or pieces to assemble – all of this slows down the amount of time it takes for the game to get from the box to the table (and vice versa when clearing up). As a means of speeding up game setup, I’ve been looking into making custom inserts for board games. This train of thought started with me stumbling onto a website called The Broken Token, which does custom game accessories, including laser-cut boardgame inserts. I’m particularly enamoured with their Cosmic Encounter insert. Immediately covetous, I started researching game inserts and came across the concept of foamcore. Foamcore is essentially a sheet of material which consists of two very thin layers of cardboard with a sandwich of foam in between. It can be cut to size and shape and is quite rigid, so it has picked up quite a bit of use for making custom inserts for boardgames. This sent me down another rabbithole of research. Starting with The Esoteric Order of Gamers‘s YouTube tutorial on foamcore, then finding the mega list…
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boardgames, making

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