When you open a game box, there is often that moment when you cringe in expectation, not knowing if that sharp right turn you made on the way to game night rearranged its insides. Having to organize a game before even playing is tedious and, though many hands make light work, is an activity I am sure we would rather avoid.
Some games such as Parks, come with great packaging. Every item has its place, making setup and packing up a breeze. Then there are games like Arkham Horror or 51st State that stick a bent piece of card board in the box and wish you “Good Luck!”. Yes, you could rubber band them, but some bands degrade and may leave an unwanted residue on the cards or, if they are too tight, leave marks or dents on their precious contents. You could place them in baggies, but I find they don’t pack well, as they need to be quite a bit larger than the decks to enable easy insertion and removal.
My preferred method is using tuck boxes. If you are lucky, some other ambitious individual has already done the work for you. Using a BoardGame Geek account, you can browse the catalog to find your game, select the “Files” and look for any “tuck” related uploads.
In my case, I had to get to page 8 before I found one, but finding a pre-existing tuck box can save lots of time. If you don’t find one, or want something custom, there are tools to help. I assume some crafting wizard could make them free hand, but that is beyond my ken. I would rather use technology to accomplish the feat. If all you are interested in is a plain box with maybe a text title on it, look no further than the modestly named Super Deluxe Tuckbox Template Maker, By Craig Forbes. Measure your deck dimensions, pop in a title and you are off to the races. Just download and print the PDF, then cut it out and glue it together and you’re done. Use colored paper to add a little pizzazz. I have used this to create boxes for cards or large tiles, such as those with Lost Ruins of Arnak.
However; if, like me, you prefer to be a bit extra, you may want to add some graphics to the box. In that case, I recommend the Board Game Tuck Box Creator by Tyson Manwarren.
Measuring your deck is the first step in creating a tuck box and a mostly straight forward process. Grab a card, in a sleeve if being stored that way, and measure it with your ruler. I prefer using metric as it is simpler to enter versus converting English units to a decimal. add two millimeters to each dimension. You may want to experiment with these allowances or add even more depth if the deck may increase in size by adding cards as you play, say with a legacy game.
The only part of measuring I find difficult is the depth. Most rulers do not start with zero on the edge, so you would have to hold the cards sideways to measure this. The act of holding them may compress the cards or separate them, making for a poor fit. I prefer to lay the cards on a table, then hold an index card or piece of cardboard against the deck and mark the depth with a pencil, then measure from the edge of the card to that mark to obtain the depth.
The next step in creating your fancy pants tuck box is to locate some images to decorate the front, back, sides and ends. I use Google image search to find mine. Note that he Board Game Tuck Box Creator requires the images to be in Jpeg format. You may be asking, “Do I look like I know what a Jpeg is?” but don’t worry, just append “filetype:jpg” to your search and you will only see the appropriate results.
In my example, I am creating a box for my Arkham Horror The Card Game Agnes Baker investigator deck, so I searched for: Agnes Baker filetype:jpg Browse through the results for your preferred images and modify your search terms as needed. I performed a second search for: Arkham Horror the Card Game filetype:jpg to find the images I preferred for my box sides and ends. Save copies of the images to your computer. Here are the ones I picked for my box:
In my case, I needed to rotate my front and back images (Do not trust the Windows Explorer “rotate” option). The Tuck Box Creator has an option to “Edit image” but it never worked for me. If you do not have an image editing tool on your computer, I recommend using the web tool https://www.resizepixel.com/, which can rotate, crop and, if you find an image in a different forma, convert it to JPG. After rotating my front and back images 90° counter clockwise, I was ready to add them to my box.
For each image, click on the “Upload” button in the related area and a pop-up window will appear. Click “Choose File” and browse to where you saved the related image and select it, then click on “Upload Now” and repeat for each of the four images. It is not required to have an image for each area, which brings us to the “OTHER SETTINGS” field of the tool. The “Fill Color” specified here is shown in any portion of the box not covered by an image. Click on “Show/Hide Colors” and choose a color on the right and then it’s brightness on the left. Click “Show/Hide Colors” again to dismiss the color selection tool. In this section you can also name the box to save it for any future modifications. Above that in the “TEXT” section , you can add some plan text to the back of the box, if desired.
Once all your images, color and text are as desired, click on the “Create PDF” button and you will get a PDF file you can either print, I recommend using card stock, or save the file for later. If it doesn’t look as expected, as mine did before I rotated the front and back, just make the desired changes, and click “Create PDF” again. Once it looks good, get to work with your hobby knife and glue!
Here are some examples of boxes I made using these methods for 51st State master Set:
If you are interested in some other types of boxes, check out Templatemaker.nl
