The following article was written by TheChap, which many of you will know from hosting the Cardboard of the Rings podcast and being one of the brave souls carrying forward a complete progression series on the podcast’s Youtube channel. I approached him forever ago to explain all about his unique way of storing his cards. Thanks a lot, Chad! — Durin’s Father
I was volun-told to do a write-up on my storage solution for Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, whhiiiiich is a Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games. My player card storage is… boring. A Hobby Lobby art case holds about two-thirds of them (Leadership, Tactics, Neutral), Lore cards are in a white shoe-sleeve thing, and Spirit, the Heroes, along with some other random cards, are in an OG core box. Convoluted and scattered, but it works. Certainly nothing worth writing about.
My Encounter cards, on the other hand, are stored in a very interesting and pleasing to the eye system. I wanted a solution that separated each cycle or type into its own ‘container.’ My storage solution for encounter cards is based on a post I found on a Board Game Geek Forum. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1548613/my-custom-storage-solution-reusing-deluxe-expansio#22243250
As soon as I saw this idea, I knew I wanted to do it. I love the art of the deluxe boxes, but what to do with them? I want to display them but also have them serve a purpose. They are an annoying size, not being deep enough to put sleeved cards in horizontally. The solution to that is to increase the depth of the box. This can be done in one of two ways:
A deluxe box insert can be found online that sits inside the bottom and increases the depth enough that you can fit a cycle’s worth of sleeved cards horizontally. These inserts come with some dividers (but not enough) to sort your encounter sets. I have purchased dividers from Tesseract Games to keep my sets organized. I do not prefer this way because a gap can be seen.
This leads me to the second option.
Be warned that you may need some help from the community if you wish to do this. The idea is simple, double the depth of a deluxe box by attaching two bottoms together.
You will need to destroy a deluxe box bottom to do this. Basically, take the deluxe box you want to be visible and set it aside. Then, take a deluxe box you do not need and cut the bottom out (this is where you might need to have someone in the community send you extras). Attach the cut-out ‘ring’ above the set-aside bottom. You can use the removed cardboard from the bottom and some hot-glue to do this.
Now, when you set the top of the deluxe on this, it will cover the ‘ring’ you have attached. When you look at the closed box, you cannot tell you did any of this crafting. The middle divider is made from the insert that came with the deluxe box, cut and folded to fit where I wanted it. I have all my encounter cards sleeved and stored in their respective deluxe boxes. The first and second cycles are together in one box. If you wanted, you could do this with every two cycles, combining them together in a single box, and display the bottom of one cycle and the top of the other.
I can prop the lids up to display the art if I want. The Hobbit saga is in one box, the LOTR Sagas are in two, and all the PODs are in the box that came with the 2-player starter kit.
Imagine all the time and energy that could have been saved if they just made the boxes deeper! It was a fun project to do, and I am very happy with the outcome. The result looks great on my game shelf, and the ease of access it provides is wonderful.
If you want to share your storage solutions and get a place in the blog’s Storage Hub, please reach out to Durin’s Father via any social media that you can find him on. Alternatively, you can also contact me via the blog’s contact page.
Vision Of The Palantir 