I used to be like you. I used to have a cluttered shelf filled with all odd-sized game boxes for games like Love Letter, The Crew - Quest for Planet Nine, Welcome To The Dungeon and Silver. Mine looked kind of like this:
The problem with these great little filler games is they all have different sized boxes and there’s no good way to stack them. And to make matters worse, some of these games have boxes twice as big as they need to be (I’m talking to you Silver).
But what if I told you that instead of your Kallax resembling Act II of Les Miserables, that you could fit sixteen filler games, including all of the ones I’ve mentioned so far, in one portable carrying case (with a handle!) that takes just 15 inches of shelf space?
Photo Case Solution
The solution is the Novelinks 4" x 6" Photo Case, which comes with 16 small color coded boxes, each of which nests inside the bigger case. There’s even room between the cases for some smaller rulebooks. I’ve created a series of different organizers, the first of which is shown below.
EDIT: I admit I’m not the first one to this party. I have learned there are several great projects out there based on these same photo cases. If you like their designs better, by all means print theirs out instead. But read below first before you decide. I heavily optimized my design to use the least amount of filament possible. My latest design uses 18 grams of filament. This other design uses almost 100 grams, and this one would take about 160 grams and requires 3 separate printed parts.
2 Deck Organizer
I’ve custom modeled a 3D printable insert that fits into the small boxes inside the photo case. It’s setup for any small game that consists of two poker-sized decks with some small tokens, dice or chits. At just 30 grams, it’s super economical to print. It uses maybe 35 cents of filament prints in about 2 hours 10 minutes on standard 0.4mm nozzle. PLA or PETG are fine choices here. The download zip file includes two versions: one for sleeved cards and one for unsleeved.
Here you can see one with the game Silver inside it. This organizer also works with Mai-Star, Cheaty Mages, 7 and 7 and many more.
Update: I’ve completely optimized the original design to reduce filament usage, speed up printing, and have more usable space to store tokens, chits, dice, and even a pen. My new vesion uses less than 18 grams of filament. It now takes just 1 hour 12 minutes with the stock nozzle on my Prusa MK3S. As usual NO SUPPORTS, rafts, or brim required. Print at 100% infill, draft mode.
But since you’re going to be printing a lot of these, why don’t you save yourself a lot of time with a bigger nozzle? Switching to a 0.8mm nozzle cuts the time to less than 30 minutes, and you’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference in print quality.
Print Times
| Nozzle Size | Layer Height | Print Time |
|---|---|---|
| 0.4mm | 0.3mm | 1 hr 9 min |
| 0.6mm | 0.4mm | 39 min |
| 0.8mm | 0.55mm | 28 min |
Other Organizers
Stay tuned for more organizers to be released soon for The Crew - Quest for Planet Nine, Welcome To The Dungeon, Citadels and more.
Credit
The inspiration for these designs came from my sister and her husband who created a similar insert for their filler games. I converted their original two deck organizer to Fusion 360 and optimized them for faster printing.
Downloads
| Item | Download Link | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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This work is released under the CC-BY-NC-ND-4 International License
How To Support Me
Chances are, if you're here, you play tabletop games. So please check out Waddle Waddle, my penguin-themed tabletop game that's perfect for family game night. It plays 2-6 players and is great for players 9 and up. Waddle Waddle is a game that's both fun AND educational. It features six real world penguin scientists and dozens of great photos of penguins that I took while in Antarctica.
If you printed one of my 3D designs, please check out Waddle Waddle. It’s in-stock now!
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My designs are all designed to minimize filament usage, and that directly saves you MONEY, and many hours of print time. Most of these designs take two or three generations to perfect. You can show your thanks for me saving you money and many HOURS of your time making by a small donation to defray the cost of professional software licenses, printer wear and tear, and the filament I use to develop this content for you: