Storage Solutions: Codus

Another expansion to the storage hub today, and where the previous articles featured boxes made by large companies, today’s boxes are custom made for this game. I hope you all enjoy and that I will receive more articles on unique storage solutions in the future!

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For the last few years I’ve been storing all my player cards inside the original box using the Broken Token insert, which has proved a neat and elegant storage solution and meant I could still enjoy the box art. The encounter cards were stored in their cycles inside pretty cheap generic cardboard deck boxes. This wasn’t so neat, as a full cycle is a very tight fit and left no ‘flip’ room or space for dividers but in the absence of anything else I just put up with it.

However, now the card pool has grown to the point where this is no longer sufficient, I’ve had to rethink and eventually decided to take the plunge and spend some money. After all, I’ve spent a LOT of cash on this collection, it seems fitting to house it in a suitable manner.

Now, fair warning: this is not a budget solution, and was really only possible because of a good friend of mine who happens to own a company that makes MDF scenery for tabletop games!

Player Cards

Simply put, I wanted to adopt a similar approach to the broken token insert. The ability to move the dividers around works really well so we came up with the idea of individual boxes, one for each sphere and made them around A4 size (US letter size). This comfortably houses all the current cards and leaves a generous amount of space for future expansion.

On top of the lid is the game logo, the sphere icon and name.

The box is double layered – the outer layer is 3mm MDF, with an inner liner of 2mm MDF. This inner liner has been notched similar to the Broken Token design so that dividers can be slotted in. It is also set down 7mm to allow the lid to slot inside (which has a corresponding 6mm deep lip).

Encounter Cards

I really liked the idea of having each cycle in separate boxes so that I can throw an entire cycle into my bag if I’m going to play LOTR at the local games store, so we designed some smaller boxes that had more wiggle room than the el-cheapo cardboard ones, and put in some custom inserts. I wanted all the boxes to be the same size for stacking purposes, so we had to ensure they were large enough to accommodate the cycle that had the most different encounter sets – 10 points if you can name which cycle this is without checking Google!

Again these boxes are double layered but this time the inner layer protrudes above the outer, and the lid slots over the top to create a flush finish when closed.

 Because each encounter deck is a different size we had to veer away from notched dividers, and went for loose ones with reference tabs so you can flip through the cards. Each divider has the encounter set icon etched into it.

The top of each lid is etched with the Deluxe box name (or Core Set), its icon, and the name of the subsequent cycle.

Tokens/Threat Tracker

Now, in all honesty I can’t take any credit for this design as these MDF books have long been in Darrel’s line of products. He is responsible for this genius design of etching a series of lines into a sheet of MDF, allowing it to curve like the spine of an old ancient tome. I just asked him to add some LOTR style graphics, and tokens!

When you open the book, one third has a compartment that is large enough to hold a 50 card deck plus hero.

The remaining two thirds has two levels. The top level is further compartmentalised to hold custom MDF tokens. I opted for The One Ring icons to depict resource tokens, drops of blood for wounds, and kept with the feet for progress. Then for convenience there are also 3x tokens of each variety.

And just an enlarged photo of one of the tokens showing Darrell’s beautiful work on the One Ring!

The lower level holds a sliding tray, recessed to contain an MDF threat tracker.

This book holds everything needed for a game night (as long as you have pre-built your deck!), and as mentioned before it is now the simplest thing to throw it into my game bag with any one of the encounter card boxes.

So there it is – my very self-indulgent storage solution.

This is still a work in progress, however. So far I only have encounter card boxes for all 7 cycles up to Haradrim. We need to sit down and design storage for all the saga boxes, the neutral player cards and also have a think about nightmare decks, which is a nightmare in itself!

Answer to largest number of encounter sets: