With most board games these days, it seems that the creative juices have dried up once the game has been designed, and that someone in marketing says “Ah, just throw the stuff in a box.”
A friend got me hooked on making custom box inserts using foam core and pointed me to The Esoteric Order of Gamers to get me started. You can see some of the stuff he’s done at Pimp My Games.
Here we have one such fine specimen:
I love Ninjato, but let’s face it: having two columns for all the pieces and cards?
Here’s what I came up with using foam core:
I thought it was done, but something was nagging. I realised that the game board might damage the box insert or vice versa. So I got mounting board, which in itself is quite thin but strong.
And as you can see, everything packs up neatly:
