Week in Review
Another week of Carcosa reviews is behind us. Hastur’s Gift is a set that makes human enemies suitably scary. Decay and Filth, which wears on investigator’s assets and on their ability to find clues, isn’t quite as impactful but still has its moments. Both are used in The Unspeakable Oath, which takes the old trope of sneaking through an dark asylum with a terrible secret and runs with it. It’s tense, it’s difficult and the stakes are high.
Soapbox
Two weeks ago, i used this space to give an overview of my storage solution for this game. I am going to follow up on that post today with a look into my token boxes and what i am using instead of the (in my opinion) rather unappealing cardboard chits that come with the Core Box.
The first box holds everything related to the chaos bag and also some tokens i either don’t use a lot or only in specific circumstances.
For the chaos bag i use these heavy clunkers from ElsieGee Tokens on etsy: Core + Bless/Curse. If i had to do only one upgrade to my game, it would be this. I find fishing for the cardboard tokens in a bag completely intolerable. It’s either getting good tokens like these ones or using a phone app. The chaos bag in the picture is also from etsy, a store named NeedleAndThreadly.
Also in that box i have replacements for the keys and flood tokens from Innsmouth. Those are from BuyTheSameToken, another etsy store.
The fourth tab in the pictured token box has some Burger Tokens that i mostly don’t use anymore because i got nicer replacements. Also some stands that i sometimes use to prop up Hunter enemies in cramped scenarios. I took mine from a 1990s boardgame called Space Crusade (basically Hero Quest’s lesser known brother), but i am sure similar things are found in many other board games.
The other token box is for everything that is used during the game itself.
Charge, ammo, secrets, etc tokens are once again by ElsieGee. I really like how heavy their tokens are. Relevant links: [1] – [2] – [3]. As a personal modification, i glued two different tokens together to create a double sided thing that is even more heavy and easy to pick up.
For damage and horror, i use the Burger Tokens. These are often used in larger quantities and have to move around with enemies and stuff. So i wanted some that are lighter and easier to handle. These fit the bill very well. They were the first replacement tokens i got and they offer a good amount of improvement for their price.
For Clue and Doom tokens, i used the Burger ones for a long time as well and for similar reasons. They get moved around a lot, so i wanted something light. Issue is, the set doesn’t have enough of them. So when i ordered the keys and floods from BuyTheSameToken, i also went and got myself a bunch of their doom/clues. And i prefer them.
Location connectors are once again from ElsieGee. Same as before, they are placed once and stick around, so i wanted something with a bit more weight behind it.
For money resources, i use poker-style chips. I own a 200 box of Iron Clays for general board gamery, so i put a couple of them into my Arkham tokens. Really neat, especially when you play some wealthy rogues who start getting good stacks of these. Gregory Gry becomes a lot more attractive if he comes into play with a stack of 9 chips on him.
The final thing that was grinding my gears were the investigator mini cards. Long story short, they take up too much space and even with stands they were kinda annoying. So i went and build these investigator capsules using these files by yeeshkul on Boardgamegeek. Print them, cut them out (or use a circle punch if you want them to look better than mine) and put them into a coin capsule together with one of the cardboard chaos bag tokens you no longer need because you replaced them. A solid hour or three to sit down and get it done, but it’s worth it.
If you want to go the extra mile for those investigator tokens, there are these cute boxes for coin collectors that you can use to keep them organized. Very snazzy. And handy, too.
And that’s it for a look around my upgraded components and storage for this great game. It’s all a bit expensive and overly indulgent, but oh well… a man needs his toys, right?
