I am not going to lie; I stole most of these ideas from Durin’s Father and others in the community. I won’t bore you, more like terrify you with my OLD storage solution. Anyway, I still want to share my thoughts on storage because I cannot buy 10 plus Ultimate Guard boxes, although I would like to upgrade at some point, maybe one box at a time. I hope you all find my “budget friendlier” solution helpful.
Encounter cards
My collection of encounter cards are in simple white 500 count card boxes (horizontal) that you can find at any FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store) but can also be found online just about anywhere. Each cycle is in its own box with a small amount of breathing room. For that extra space you get when you take an encounter deck out to play, I place an empty 80 card deck box in its place (also purchased at a FLGS), so my cards don’t annoyingly fall over and mix together. I used different colors for each cycle as well to correspond to the cycle’s color. Each encounter set is sleeved in clear sleeves and separated by their encounter symbol for deluxe expansions or by the adventure pack.
I have not saved any of my adventure packs plastic thingy the beautiful cards come in, but I cut the inserts (yes, I know the blasphemy!) to fit slightly better as dividers inside the cycle boxes. Unfortunately, they still don’t really fit! I should probably fix those, then again I cut them to show off the art…
Clear Sleeves on Amazon for Encounter Cards
Also, buy directly from Ultra pro: https://www.ultrapro.com/product_info.php?products_id=3020&osCsid=qcncdsh24n3234n76okd1eftv0
When I purchased my boxes, I was able to find a pack of 10, this link is for a pack of 4, but it’s a start. If I come across the ten pack, I will update this link.
Player Cards
I have separated my player cards into colored, three-ring binders (the colors correspond to the spheres) and have sleeved the cards alphabetically. Alphabetically works better for my brain; I know that many people in the community love to organize their cards by cost, but that doesn’t work for me. The cards are in order of Allies, Attachments, Events, and Side-quests. Each binder needs about 25-30 sleeves for the way I lay my cards out (you could get away with far fewer if you triple up your cards). I single-stack my cards, so each card takes up a single row, and I only double stack the Core Set cards (I have 2 Core Sets). My neutral cards are in a smaller (I believe a half-inch? or one inch?) white binder, and all my rules inserts are in a black binder. I will need to add another binder for my A Long Extended Party prints. I am so excited I can’t wait to start adding them to my decks. Seriously though, those cards are gorgeous Chris, you and the ALEP team are amazing!
My heroes are sleeved and ready to go, however, they are inside a card box and not on display in a binder yet. That is the top of my list, just haven’t bought one yet.
Mats
I have three playmats. I found them all on ebay at various times. I want to find or make a mat that has a Willpower/Threat level tracker.
Decks
After I reorganized my cards this way, I began making some decks in a similar fashion to Daan’s colorful “many decks of many colors,” as I shall now refer to this concept of deck building.
Here is the link to his article about his many decks of many colors and building multiple decks if you want to know more. And a link to the storage article. Also, Shelin just uploaded 18 decks with no proxies onto RingsDB.
Also, Durin’s Father is far more organized than I am. I didn’t plan my decks out very well the first time around to not include certain cards because most of my gameplay is solo. I did plan to organize my decks that way, but when everything shut down, I just built my decks for myself. If things open back up, and we can all get together for some cons, I will rebuild my decks so they do not have any repeats (or have thick card stock proxies). Now I’m a bit chaotic, so after I have built five or so decks, and I don’t have a printer to print out proxies, I just take cards in their colored sleeves and throw them into a new deck I’m building instead of removing the cards from one color, then putting them into another color. This is how I usually build a new deck for testing, but if I decide to keep the deck and scrap the old one, I will then re-sleeve the cards into a single color. Often times I can’t remember what card is which from a handful of decks. Okay, except maybe those two yellow-sleeved ones are A Test of Will, but other than that, forget about it, literally. I did. Seriously I can barely remember what I ate last week. Chicken…I think it was Chicken, or maybe salted pork…
My point here is that I don’t have any problem mixing my cards from one deck to another, especially if it is temporary. I wish I had thought of this sooner! It would have saved me a lot of time…
It makes it so easy to deconstruct a deck and rebuild an old one. Chances are, for me anyway, that old deck was better, to begin with. And if this new deck is going tag along to a Con, then I will be that guy with “many colors in that one deck.” Fine, I hear you, that was terrible; many decks of many colors is still a good one, though. Or, as I said before, I will simply re-sleeve them into one color if it’s a keeper.
The one thing in my collection I did spend some money on (aside from the obvious…the cards) is my box that holds my “many decks of many colors,” some dice, threat counters, and 3 playmats. I store these sometimes mangled and mixed decks into a turquoise Superhive 550+ XenoSkin box. Along with the three playmats I have, 27 small 6 sided dice in 3 different colors that I use in place of tokens, green for progress, blue for resources, and red for damage. I also have my 2020 COTR swag threat counter, custom metal d20, and my standard threat counters from two core sets.
I also keep my awesome Vision of the Palantir wooden laser etched cards in my Superhive as well. I had them out for taking photos but I use them as deviders between my many decks of many colors when they are not being used.
Superhive 550+ XenoSkin from Amazon
I purchased most of my colored sleeves at a few FLGS, and some on amazon. If you would like links to any of them leave a coment below with the color you are trying to find and I will help you find them.
Dice: Progress, Resources, Damage
I tried to embed a link for each color of dice from chessex, but their link only takes you to the page where you can order dice from them. Here it is and by all means order ALL the dice! Or just the diice you need I guess…One can never have too many dice though… I bought all my dice from a few different FLGS. https://store.chessex.com:11552/IW_Products.m4p.pvx?;MULTI_ITEM_SUBMIT
On the Go
If I were to take my cards to a Con or a friend’s house, I would see what everyone would want to play and bring that cycle(s) box(es) and my one Superhive box. If the Con were out of state and I wanted to bring multiple cycles, it is still very doable. Although, I do not have a pack or travel case yet, so I currently travel with my Superhive and a cycle box in a small bin. If I am going to a friend’s house who wants to build decks I will take on of the larger bins with all my binders in addition to my Superhive.
Storage
(When not at the table, on the shelf, or during hurricane season, I live in Florida)
For now, I store all of my player cards inside a “weatherproof” container bin that I’m not sure “actually” seals anything…like at all…
But at the moment, it works great for keeping my cards in one place, well, two places. I have one for player cards and one for encounter cards. And will keep them protected from spills, rowdy nieces, dogs, or any other unforeseen creatures from the deep (like my tarantulas). I did just get a new bookshelf, and I plan to use part of that to store my cards, so at the moment, they are just in the bins.
Future Updates and Additions
At the top of my list are a binder for my heroes, some tokens to know who is exhausted or ready without having to turn cards, and others for remembering defensive, questing, or attacking boosts. Also, a pack to carry my collection when going to a friend’s house or a Con. I would also like to track down a playmat with numbers up to 50, so I don’t have to do math 3 times while resolving quests; I may just make one.
I want to get a proper weatherproof container/bin for longer trips, or if I should move.
I would like to eventually purchase some of those amazing dividers that Tesseract Games makes.
Oh, and I need to get more of those Ultimate Guard dividers instead of those cardboard pieces.
And finally, I need a binder for my A Long Extended Party cards.
Conclusion
As you can see, my storage solution is also a work in progress. It still needs a bit of work, some bits, and bobs, as it were. But I hope this was helpful as a budget friendlier system. Please let me know your thoughts.
I am no expert deck builder. Nor am I stranger to forgetting half the rules. I don’t play half as often as I would like, and I don’t play half the cards half as much as they deserve. But that is changing. Well, at least the playing more and using more cards. Certainly, not the deck building, nor are these awful jokes getting any better anytime soon. And with that, it is time to end; I’m going now…I bid you all a very fond farewell. Until next time, cheers, and happy gaming.
Beleg
Vision Of The Palantir 