box inserts

7 Wonders has been one of John’s favourite board games since we were introduced to it at our first PAX. We’ve since bought all expansions to date, and in order to travel around with them I’ve made these box inserts to accommodate the base game and the Leaders, Cities and Babel expansions.

I was initially inspired by a foamcore storage solution that Pichy first showed me. Once I knew that all of the components could fit in the original box I knew I could design something out of 3mm MDF – and I thought I could do it with room to spare!

My main goals for this design were the following:

• Able to store all components for 7 Wonders and its current expansions in the original game box. Try to allow room for at least one more expansion.
• Keep components from each set together. So (apart from reprints of money, military tokens) the Babel tokens shouldn’t get mixed in with the base set tokens.
• Keep more commonly used components most accessible. We enjoy all of the expansions but we frequently find that we play without Babel when we introduce new players to the game. So we don’t want to dig through Babel stuff to get at the rest of the components.
• Try to fit in the score sheets! We love the score sheets.

I first measured all the components and got a feel for the volume they would take up. I experimented a bit with laying out the inserts in illustrator first, but eventually did a bit of 3D modelling to see how it would all go together.

This is just the first draft. I have already thought of some minor improvements to implement but I want to overhaul the layout of the trays so a more significant set of changes need to be made. At some point I will get my act together and work out what those changes will be.