Beyond the likes of Chess and Monopoly, the more involved board games not only come with lots of small tokens, decks of cards and other miscellany, but the popular ones inevitably get expansions and add-ons, leaving you with a complicated mess of bits and pieces to sort and store, not to mention unpack when it comes to playing again. Save yourself some time and hassle by properly organising things with zip-lock bags, rubber bands and even small boxes.
The board game in the photo above is Arkham Horror, based on HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. It is up there as one of the most complicated board games and as such, comes with its fair share of components. The box it comes in, unfortunately, is not up to the task of compartmentalising everything so if you’re unprepared at pack-up time, the contents of the game box can get very messy, very quickly.
The solution is to pick up a bunch of cheap zip-lock bags from the likes of eBay and a bag of rubber bands, which you can grab from a newsagents or Officeworks. Depending on how delicate the pieces are, you could even opt for card boxes.
With these items on-hand, packing up a new board game, or sorting an older one, is less of a problem. You’ll still need to take the effort to organise it all when you’re finished with a game, but you’ll thank your past-self when your friends don’t have to hang around while you sort your stamina and sanity tokens from your clues.
Photo by Andrew Petro / Flickr. Licensed under Creative Commons 2.0
Comments
3 responses to “Organise And Consolidate Board Games With Zip-Lock Bags And Rubber Bands”
I’m wondering how this is news. Most people who play the non-mainstream boardgames already know this. It’s pretty obvious.
What’s cool is the foam core board creations that many gamers have created to better organise their games. For example, the Esoteric Order of Gamers offers some plans and some good youtube tutorials on how to do this: http://www.orderofgamers.com/category/foamcore-plans
I’m planning to give the foam core board organisation a shot soon for some of my games – because zip lock backs are all well and good but they don’t stop stuff sliding around inside the box!
I agree with the article. Although the game I created, KickShot Soccer Board Game (www.kickshot.org) provides a nice plastic tray and a cardboard box, the best ands I palest storage I have found are zip-lock bags. Quite amazing what these bags can hold and save in time and heartache.
Rubber bands are an absolute no-no for board gamers. They decay leaving sticky goop all over your bits.
Pro tip: Use bondage tape instead, No adhesive involved, doesn’t decay.
Instead of buying plastic bags, you can often go to the bank and ask for some coin bags. They are free and pre-punched so you don’t get air trapped in.