Week in Review
Finally, some fishpeople. This week was Innsmouth’s first appearance on Ancient Evils, with pages for the three encounter sets Shattered Memories, Creatures of the Deep and Rising Tide. I like the first two a lot. Memories is an interesting twist on effects we know and expect from the encounter deck. And Creatures gives a unique identity to the primary enemy type of the campaign. Rising Tide i am a bit more torn on, but it’s at least solid. My main complaint would be that the card Rising Tides doesn’t really do a whole lot when the agenda already does most of the flooding.
In any case, next week on Monday (so… tomorrow) the review for Pit of Despair will go up. After that it’s back to Dunwich on Wednesday and Friday.
Soapbox
Something that always gets a lot of talk from new and veteran players alike is what players do to customize their storage and game components. Since the game doesn’t actually come with any sane ways to keep your cards stashed away, this is a hot topic that is unlikely to ever go away. I’d like to take this opportunity to use two of my Soapbox spaces to show off my storage solutions and what upgrades i made to the tokens. Storage today, tokens at a later point. One disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the stores or manufactures linked below, i am just some dude who liked these products.
Let’s get the FFG solution out of the way. I own the four Return To boxes and those are a fine place to store their campaigns. The inlay that comes with those boxes is trash, it’s only used so the cards that come with it stay in place during shipping and transport. Instead i use a single box of sleeves when necessary. That isn’t even the case for all of them. Alternatively, that extra space can be used for a token box or something similar. Thanks to the generous dimensions of the box, they easily fit all the campaign cards, encounter sets and the leaflets from the Mythos packs.
There’s not a Return To for all campaigns, so a solution is needed for the rest of them. I found a good solution in these so-called “Ultimate Guard Stack’n’Safe Card Boxes”. They are listed at an MSRP of 12€ at Ultimate Guard’s page, but i actually found them for 10€ on eBay. Very satisfied with these. They can be configured to have 3 to 6 compartments which works out perfectly. One small compartment each for the encounter sets and for the leaflets. Two big compartments for the scenarios.
Next up are player cards. I opted to go for one massive chest instead of having multiple smaller ones. This is an e-Raptor TCG Storage Big Box, available directly from e-Raptor. It listed at 100€, but is often discounted by a lot. Right now, as i am typing this, it is actually available for 60€, so if you want one, waiting might pay off. One thing to keep in mind with boxes like these is that they aren’t meant to be lugged around. You need a spot in your house where you plant it and then keep it there, this thing is massive. It does however indeed have room for all of the player cards, the investigator cards and the weaknesses. And enough room to spare for a future cycle or two.
Finally, all the loose books and leaflets go into the core box. That’s really all it’s good for (and barely, the Return To paper slips don’t even fit -.-), but it does an okay job at that. Barely. If you care about keeping them in mint condition or something, this won’t work for you.
To also answer another topic that often comes up and is related to storing your cards: Yes, i sleeve my cards. I usually don’t for my board games, but i throw so much money at the Arkham LCG that not sleeving it seems criminal to me. I prefer Dragon Shields, for one simple reason: They are never out of stock. Every store has them, they come in lots of colors and their price to quality ratio is … reasonable. They aren’t the cheapest, but they also don’t feel cheap. After playing this game nonstop for abou 30 campaigns i had to replace two sleeves. Whatever.
I did come up with a bit of color coding to make setup and tear down a bit easier. All cards that go into player decks are in black sleeves. Everything that goes into the encounter deck is is petrol. Cards that are set aside and never enter the encounter deck, (like The Experiment in Extracurricular Activity) are in red. Clear sleeves for the investigator cards and some double sided story cards that are shuffled. I don’t sleeve locations, unless they are shuffled.
A lot of money (hundreds of €) went into sleeves over time. I sometimes wonder if sleeving all of the player cards was a mistake. But then i start building or upgrading decks and can just do so without fiddling around with sleeves and it seems worth it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And that’s it for today. I will make a similar post about my tokens and bag upgrades at a later point. Might already be next week, if there’s nothing better to talk about that i want to use my soapbox for.