We continue to expand our storage hub with today’s article by McDog3 on how he stores his cards. I hope his solutions help you to find a solution suitable for your games. If you want to share your solution on the blog as well, reach out to me via this blog’s contact page, or send me a message through any outlet you can reach me on. And now, on with the article!
My storage solution has been continuously evolving over the years. I will begin by describing previous storage solutions and how my approach changed as my collection grew.
Player card storage
The one constant I have always done was to use binders for my player card solution. I love the art of this game, so I enjoy being able to thumb through the pages to see all the cards. Over time my standard 1’’ binders were swapped out in favor of the Ultra Pro side-loading binders, which I love. I have separate binders for each of the spheres, another for neutral, and a final one for campaign related cards (boons, burdens and such). I keep a relatively lightweight organization to the player cards, inside a binder the cards are separated into sections for heroes, allies, attachments, events, side quests. There is no sub-categorization, but in general the newest cards will be at the end of the section so you could consider the release date as the only sub-category.
Encounter card storage
Originally I stuck the encounter cards inside the core set box, all I needed was a small space to store my collection! My card pool quickly expanded after that and soon I was trying to figure out a new solution. Eventually, I decided on the Wooden Artist Box case solution, which back then I imagined would always be able to hold my collection. Fast forward 4 years and suddenly the card pool has grown enough that not even a single artist box was going to hold all of the encounter cards. I contemplated how to proceed – do I buy another case or do I find another solution?
First, it was important for me to enumerate what I desired out of my storage. I came away with 3 things:
- Modularity – I wanted a solution that could break my collection into smaller pieces. This would make it easier for me to find space to store the collection as well as bringing pieces of it to public events.
- Mobility – The artist box eventually became too heavy and bulky to carry around to events, so I stopped bringing it when I went out to play with a group. Instead, I was grabbing a few quests from the latest cycle and stashing that in various deck boxes. This was the opposite of my original intent, my new solution needed to be one that addressed this.
- Presentation – I always preferred my player cards to be in binders, almost entirely for the aesthetic. I love displaying all of the player art for the game! It’s less reasonable to showcase all of the encounter card art, so the wooden artist box was my equivalent for the encounters. It was something that caught the eye, so the question became: what could I transition to with a similar prettiness?
I eventually landed on Ultimate Guard Arkhive deck boxes because it checked everything off my list. An Arkhive can hold a deluxe expansion + its cycle + the associated nightmare packs. This natural breakpoint between Arkhives was extremely appealing, now I can take the latest cycle’s quests to meetups (as I always have done) by grabbing a single box. I matched up the Arkhive colors with the expansion’s color palette the best I could. Most of the cycles are pretty recognizable just by glancing at the container.
The Arkhives may take up more space, volume-wise, but with their smallness the lend themselves to vertical storage by stacking. In this manner I can save room by making use of their ability to stack. As shown below, my current storage space is lacking in eloquence, but first my entire board game collection is in desperate need of reorganization.
Inside the Arkhive I use Ryno (and more recently Ryno-like) dividers for the deluxe encounter sets, as well as the nightmare sets. The cycle is separated from the deluxe by a foam insert and are then divided using the art inserts within the AP. I loved the original cardboard AP boxes as cutting out the front and top pieces make beautifully natural dividers with the quest name front and center. The newer “clamshell” art packaging doesn’t give quite the same effect, but for my purposes suffice in regards to dividing APs. Eventually I want to somehow make the quest names more prominent on the clamshell art piece. Whether that is cutting the name from the bottom and gluing it on the top, or some other idea, I haven’t figured out yet.
Token storage
I have more tokens than I know what to do with at this point and I have several storage containers for these. My first (and still often used) was a simple Plano box with compartments for the various tokens and dice I have accumulated for the game. I have two core sets worth of tokens as well as the Broken Token ones divided up. Another section holds the original (now seemingly gigantic) threat trackers and first player markers. The newest token storage comes from Con of the Rings 2018 convention! I was on the planning committee for the convention and we had decided on the large token box to leave room for people to fill it up beyond our tokens as they pleased. Right now, my box contains only the Con tokens (I still need to finish my staining process and glue the edges before I consider it “done”).
2-player starter set
As a temporary means to store the 2-player starter set cards, as well as the recent competitive scenarios, I keep these cards within Cardboard of the Rings deck boxes which were the GenCon swag from last year. Since I was there, I made sure to get the boxes signed by Owen William Weber, the artist of many LotR pieces and specifically the deck box art!
Mobile solution
Even though earlier I mentioned I like the Arkhives for their mobility, I have one other mobile solution for the times I am attending longer-running events like GenCon where carrying around Arkhives is not feasible. I have a Quiver which I use to store various player decks, a few quests, and the necessary tokens/threat trackers. Carrying the Quiver around all day is far better than hauling binders and Arkhives around, at least that is what my shoulders and back would attest to.
Playmats
Going to so many events, I have accumulated quite a few playmats over the years. I still don’t have a good storage space for these so currently they are stacked flat underneath my “gaming table” (I say in quotes as some may beg to call it a coffee table)
I hope you found this article interesting or were able to glean some value from my storage solution. As my collection grows over the passage of time, I continue to look forward to what storage opportunities await me in the future!
Oh, and as a final farewell, here’s the obligatory doggo 😉
Vision Of The Palantir 