I just finished unpacking my new copy of League of Dungeoneers, and there’s so, so many cards. Does anyone have any good ideas, DIY projects or purchase options for structures to house multiple decks of cards for actual play-time usage?
My immediate thought was something like the cardboard storage riser that Daniel uses in his videos, but I can’t seem to find anything approaching that for purchase. I’m wondering if there’s a link to that, or something similar, or just a better way to keep that stuff sorted for use during the game. Multiple loose decks of sleeved cards is going to slide everywhere.
Daniel’s card holder is the Innovatium Hold-It! And you can get it at
Another option, and one that pays off over time for gamers, is to get a 3d printer. Bambu Labs seems to be the best products, I’ve been extremely happy with my Carbon X1, which unlike my Ender3 or whatever that delta printer was, simply works. I’ve done so many organizers and play aids with this thing, and you don’t even have to know how to use CAD software as there are so many prints out in the wild.
I like the idea of having a 3D printer, but it seems like picking up another hobby, messing with chemicals, setting up even more dedicated space, etc. I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to something like that. I do see your point though, just being able to print out organizers, parts, hell, even custom counters or tokens to streamline game play sounds really appealing.
With a filament (FDM) printer you don’t have to use any chemicals and the printing is 99% scent free. If you wanted to get into printing detailed mini’s, then you would want a resin printer. They use liquid resin, are a bit messy, can smell and you also usually use chemicals to wash your prints
I started with an Ender V3 a few years ago and…holy hell…boy was it a pain to learn how to set it up, maintain and use. I almost threw the thing out multiple times. Now, FDM printers are pretty much plug and play. My buddy has a Bambu printer and the thing is incredible. The quality of the prints, the ease of use… everything. I mainly use my printer for board game organizing and sometimes for terrain. I’ve never designed a thing since pretty.much anything you could ever dream of is already out there and is free or reasonably priced. It’s a fun tool to have.
A bit of a curveball, but I once bought a pack of 2mm thick basswood sheets off an online retailer for ~$10 and just made my own little modular thingies. It’s a ‘kitchen table’ project - you can score and cut the wood with just a craft knife, use a little wood glue to stick things together. For the cost of a little extra cleanup you can also do some sanding and staining if you want to get fancy with it. Here’s one of mine:
The bottom panel or ‘floor’ is just 1 full sheet of the wood. All the long ‘walls’ running horizontally are half a sheet cut along the long edge, and the short walls are cut to fit across the shorter edge. I’ve made 3 variants in this basic style. In this one, the center separator isn’t glued in, it just slides out – the idea there was that I could switch from holding normal poker-ish cards (with some extra wiggle room) to larger tarot cards (laid down on their long edge).
I would note that a couple of my sheets of wood arrived warped and I couldn’t make much use of them. Still happy for the price.
Go to Etsy, do a search for “Board Game Organizing”. Anything that looks like plastic was printed on an FDM printer. Some of the designs are original and made by the people selling the items, a lot of them are designs that they got for free from sites like Thingiverse and are just selling them on Etsy.
I feel the same way about 3D printers. would like to have one but worried i’m just picking up another hobby. I like having many hobbies but I sometimes get carried away.
Though I have heard, as MikeBB mentions, the printers can be less finicky now so you can spend more time printing and less time calibrating/configuring/tweaking a print.
For me, 3D printers are unappealing because it’s just more plastic. I’m much more keen on using cardboard, paper, and occasionally wood (see above) to work out storage solutions. That’s personal preference, I guess, but I’ve been a little dumbfounded seeing some BGG forum posts that roughly go:
“I don’t like storing everything in a million plastic bags…” – ok, I’m with you
“…so I got rid of them and used a significantly larger amount of plastic to print up these inserts!” – ya lost me.
Yeah, I’m not wild about producing more plastic. Cardboard or wood solutions are more appealing to me when possible. However, for something that this that I can re-use across multiple games, it feels more acceptable.
I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday. He’s on his second 3D printer, and while they have come quite a long way in terms of ease of use, reliability, etc., his take is yeah, you’re picking up a second hobby with all the problems and frustrations that comes with it. One point he mentioned that I wasn’t aware of is that he said how you have your specific printer configured makes it so that you can’t reliably pull something off the internet and it just works. It was enough to keep me convinced to avoid that road.
I like the Happy Path vision of owning a 3D printer, but at this point I think I’m fine just paying someone on Etsy to give me a finished product, rather than go a few hundred in the hole buying everything necessary and then figure out what I’m doing.
This. I did the same thing and found my X1 Carbon to be almost issue free. The Ender was a good cheap entry but within months required so much time to get it to work that i almost gave up on printing entirely. The X1 is not cheap, but if you want to get into the hobby I’d call it the price of admission. Bambu filament is also pretty cheap in bulk, US$15 or so,and they have refillable spools for those of us trying to at least look like we’re trying to save the planet. I use it mostly for organizers for storage and for play, as well as for bling. Nothing like making an organizer for someone and watching their face light up. I’ve also done Cthulhu dice towers as thank you gifts.
A well designed 3d printed insert is a marvel. I vastly prefer wood just for the tactile feel, but I’ve thought about getting a 3D printer myself just to gain access to the amazing shared creations out there available to print yourself. I haven’t owned a personal computer in like 7 years though, and don’t really have any interest in picking one up either, so it’s more of a pipe dream.
I love the Hold-it but I use these. 6 for 13 bucks and they are hard plastic, with an insert that can keep cards lying flat or raised and leaning back. They also connect to one another so you can only use how many you need for a particular game. I bought two sets so I have 12.
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