My Request to FFG

By Kilazar, in X-Wing

I just sent this through the "contact" method on the main page.But I figured I would post it here to see if anyone else would appreciate FFG making sheets for the small cards.

"At this point I have TOO MANY TINY CARDS, and no good way to store/sort them.

I don't have this problem with any of the board game or LCG full size cards. As there are tons of binders and card sheet's on the market for them.

Please please please, get with Ultra-Pro, or come up with your own card sheets / binders that are designed for holding the small cards.

For a game like X-Wing, it would be really nice if we could have the tiny cards in a binder. I already do this for my full size cards, and it makes the picking the ship part of the process easier. But when it comes to upgrades and what not, it's an annoying process that gets in the way of my groups playtime.

If the upgrade cards could also be put into a binder that would be nice.

Thank you."

I don't expect it'll do much good, but I fully support minicard binder sheets.

I'm using business card sheets presently and the (sleeved) cards just slide all over the place.

This post is not hyperbole.

My x-wing collection has gotten big enough that I don't play anymore due to how long it takes to dig through the tiny cards for what I want. :(. But that is just me. I have so many things in my life I could be doing that sometimes it takes just a little "effort" thing to make me switch gears to something else that might be easier to get off the ground in the little time I have to play a game.

Also I have not bought a new ship since The corvette because I just don't want to deal with more tiny cards. If I had a solution to the tiny card problem that was elegant, I'd start buying in again. But I want 5 headhunters, and that is just going to exacerbate the issue of too many tiny cards.

First world problems right?

Edited by Kilazar

I use an Ultra Pro 9 pocket binder and put two of the tiny cards sideways in each slot. They fit fine sleeved or unsleeved and there is hardly any movement.

It was recommended as a solution to this issue on these very forums so I can't take the credit for discovering it, but it works well. One binder is enough for all my pilot cards and upgrade cards currently.

I use an Ultra Pro 9 pocket binder and put two of the tiny cards sideways in each slot.

I do the same thing, in fact I have some coin sleeves I use for the base cards. They're a bit big, but the cards are thick enough that they don't move around.

Between the 3 types I have all my cards in a single 3 ring binder.

Any upper deck side-loading deckbox works perfectly to hold the small cards, they stand up in the space the regular deck would be slid into

I've seen people use a business card holder binder for the upgrade cards. Looked pretty good.

You get one of these:

http://monsterprotectors.com/product/monster-binder-9-pocket-trading-card-album-matte-gun-metal-silver/

You put the upgrade cards in turned 90 degrees, fitting two (small) stacks in a slot. You can also put pilot cards in the same binder. One size fits all. They work sleeved or un-sleeved. They sometimes move around a tiny bit, but they don't fall out or get completely out of place.

Got one. My cards are never "nice and tidy" in it. They always end up shifted and on top of each other.

You get one of these:

http://monsterprotectors.com/product/monster-binder-9-pocket-trading-card-album-matte-gun-metal-silver/

You put the upgrade cards in turned 90 degrees, fitting two (small) stacks in a slot. You can also put pilot cards in the same binder. One size fits all. They work sleeved or un-sleeved. They sometimes move around a tiny bit, but they don't fall out or get completely out of place.

That's not my experience with those smaller binders. Moved all over the place and consistently fell out.

My upgrades are all sleeved and in a binder small enough to fit in the same box as all my other ships. It's not impossible. It would certailny be nice of FFG to release one, but the product is already out there.

There are cheaper ways. I like that binder because it's not a 3 ring binder and fits in my battle foam case pocket, so there is nothing extra to carry. Any side load 9 pocket sheet will work the same. Here's some pictures to illustrate how it works. These are un doctored, straight from the book opening, so you can get a real idea of how things move around while in there.

15258194112_769805e6f5.jpg

X-Wing Upgrade Cards in side load 9 pocket card pages by mbax, on Flickr

15072013048_08137cb67c.jpg

X-Wing Upgrade Cards in side load 9 pocket card pages by mbax, on Flickr

15072011978_4c8413d7dd.jpg

X-Wing Upgrade Cards in side load 9 pocket card pages by mbax, on Flickr

15072000527_be08194d61.jpg

X-Wing Upgrade Cards in side load 9 pocket card pages by mbax, on Flickr

Those are all un-sleeved (well, a couple may be sleeved, but not many). Kinda the worse case scenario for moving around. I literally just got the book out of the battle foam pocket, opened it up and took some pictures. I touched nothing else. That's as bad as it ever gets.

Yes, I do need to reorganize things. Wave 5 is just shoved in there. I need to re do it all. Just have not had time. The pilots are a bit out of wack too.

Edited by Hexis

This post is not hyperbole.

My x-wing collection has gotten big enough that I don't play anymore due to how long it takes to dig through the tiny cards for what I want. :(. But that is just me. I have so many things in my life I could be doing that sometimes it takes just a little "effort" thing to make me switch gears to something else that might be easier to get off the ground in the little time I have to play a game.

Also I have not bought a new ship since The corvette because I just don't want to deal with more tiny cards. If I had a solution to the tiny card problem that was elegant, I'd start buying in again. But I want 5 headhunters, and that is just going to exacerbate the issue of too many tiny cards.

First world problems right?

Are your cards all sorted into piles by upgrade type? What I do is use online squad builders to build and then go to the stack of whichever upgrade I want for the cards. A stack of just EPTs is easier than a pile of all the upgrades.

It's a visual thing with me. I like to see as many of the cards in same categories in descending point costs together on the same page.

Having them in a page binder helps me choose....faster....easier.

Are your cards all sorted into piles by upgrade type? What I do is use online squad builders to build and then go to the stack of whichever upgrade I want for the cards. A stack of just EPTs is easier than a pile of all the upgrades.

Yeah, it's fine if I build lists online this way.

But most of our games are impromptu "Hey wanna play" "yeah! I'll grab my stuff and come over" Then we sit around the table and build our list. Some of us are old school and like to go through the cards in a binder setup rather than use the builders. I work alot off of visual recognition as opposed to word recognition. So when you give me a dropdown in the builder with the name of an upgrade, with out the picture, it is useless to queuing up my memory of what that upgrade does.

I know it's my problem. I'm not looking for anyone else's solutions. Just thought it would be nice if FFG pursued the option to make sheets that fit these just fine without crazy travel moving crap around. My experience with stuff moving around in the monster binder is different than the ones posted here. The cards constantly end up on top of each other and I have to dig in and fix them regularly.

But on top of that. I'm not just talking about x-wing. I own a TON of ffg games. And the ratio of tiny cards to adequate storage options is kind of insane. I just felt x-wing might get the best benefit from it. So posted up here.

Edited by Kilazar

This post is not hyperbole.

My x-wing collection has gotten big enough that I don't play anymore due to how long it takes to dig through the tiny cards for what I want. :(. But that is just me. I have so many things in my life I could be doing that sometimes it takes just a little "effort" thing to make me switch gears to something else that might be easier to get off the ground in the little time I have to play a game.

Also I have not bought a new ship since The corvette because I just don't want to deal with more tiny cards. If I had a solution to the tiny card problem that was elegant, I'd start buying in again. But I want 5 headhunters, and that is just going to exacerbate the issue of too many tiny cards.

First world problems right?

Look at my sigline. I have all the cards from them, including the doubles, stored in a 2" binder. It never takes longer than two minutes to put together a squad, because everything is nicely organized by card type and faction, where applicable. I even have the unique crew separated from the non-unique crew.

I'm not sure how you can take that long to find the cards you want, unless you don't play that often or are not organized

I keep all my cards 'by type' (like astromechs, EPTs etc) in small plastic bags (funnily enough the size of the ones small ships come with...), my pilot cards in lager ones and all the tiny counters by type in similar appropriately sized bags.

Why not use a squab builder program and print it out for friendly games?

If you're playing people you dont know i can see that being a problem but surely its not *that* much hassle to go through your cards.

I've got one of everything released and multiples of most and it never takes me more than about ten minutes to sort out a side for a game.

With having a VERY full life between a highly advanced job, my son, my wife, and out of work learning for work. I get maybe 2 hours randomly in a 2 (usually more like 1 but sometimes it's 2) week period to play. Sometimes I get a bonus 1 hour in a week at a different time than that 2 hour period. Sometimes (rarely) I can get a 5 hour period to play. But right now other games are going into that slot cause no one wants to dig out the x-wing and deal with the tiny card piles. We don't play "list of the day" from the internet, and we don't play the same list twice.

It doesn't take all that long to sort through the cards when they are in piles, but it does take about 10 to 15 minutes to select our upgrades from the piles. Once the list's of the day are built (takes us about probably 15 to 20 minutes), on my 1 hour day we now have 40-45 minutes for a game. Even Time Crunch Tournaments give you 60.

I don't know what anyone's life is like, but some people don't get to approach the game with a vast amount of time to allocate on a regular basis. So to us every minute we can save on "setup" is important. It sounds like the people who say "oh it doesn't take that long!" probably have more time to put towards this than those of us who would like a better system.

I didn't come here to argue. Some people have a system that works for them. Great. As noted by others the system that is working for those people is not working for others and we (the others) feel a better solution could be made if FFG is willing. One that could shave 5 to 10 minutes off of setup time for those of us who can't devote entire evening's and or day's of a week to this game.

The posted solutions are great for those people that they work for. The posted solutions are sh** for those people that they don't work for. It's not an insult from the people that they don't work for towards the people whom they do work for. :)

And there exists an extremely elegant solution if someone (FFG or ULTRA-PRO) wanted to invest the time to produce it. But they won't until they see enough of a demand.

Are you using a squad builder program? That saves a lot of time.

Also if you know when you're going to be playing why not do your list design in advance.

If i invite mates over i dont expect them to sit there for thirty mins while i sort my stuff out, i've chosen what i'm playing already as they will have done before coming over.

Its a bit disingenuous to claim that people who can sort their stuff out faster don't put as much effort into list construction... perhaps those people are able to make decisions faster ?

I just rubber band all the types of cards into seperate stacks. All astromech in one stack, etc. I store them in the cardboard box I won from local tournametn. There are tons of collectable card game boxes to store things in, too.

Might I suggest using a list builder to make lists and then just sorting through the stacks? Fab's list builder is great since you can choose all the various products you own and it only shows options as to what you own. It's a free website and can be viewed via smart phone. It might make things easier. I understand if you just don't like the option, though.

As for those that put them in binders, I was always frustrated when new cards came out. If you sort them in alphabetical order, then you have to slide all those cards down one bit when a new kit comes out. I found out it took too long to bother with all that as I'm not one of those people that gets off on organization of things. I understand that there are people there who probably would get as much pleasure for alphabetizing their cards as from playing the game.

With having a VERY full life between a highly advanced job, my son, my wife, and out of work learning for work. I get maybe 2 hours randomly in a 2 (usually more like 1 but sometimes it's 2) week period to play. Sometimes I get a bonus 1 hour in a week at a different time than that 2 hour period. Sometimes (rarely) I can get a 5 hour period to play. But right now other games are going into that slot cause no one wants to dig out the x-wing and deal with the tiny card piles. We don't play "list of the day" from the internet, and we don't play the same list twice.

It doesn't take all that long to sort through the cards when they are in piles, but it does take about 10 to 15 minutes to select our upgrades from the piles. Once the list's of the day are built (takes us about probably 15 to 20 minutes), on my 1 hour day we now have 40-45 minutes for a game. Even Time Crunch Tournaments give you 60.

I don't know what anyone's life is like, but some people don't get to approach the game with a vast amount of time to allocate on a regular basis. So to us every minute we can save on "setup" is important. It sounds like the people who say "oh it doesn't take that long!" probably have more time to put towards this than those of us who would like a better system.

I didn't come here to argue. Some people have a system that works for them. Great. As noted by others the system that is working for those people is not working for others and we (the others) feel a better solution could be made if FFG is willing. One that could shave 5 to 10 minutes off of setup time for those of us who can't devote entire evening's and or day's of a week to this game.

The posted solutions are great for those people that they work for. The posted solutions are sh** for those people that they don't work for. It's not an insult from the people that they don't work for towards the people whom they do work for. :)

And there exists an extremely elegant solution if someone (FFG or ULTRA-PRO) wanted to invest the time to produce it. But they won't until they see enough of a demand.

I'm not seeing how Helix' solution doesn't work for you?

I use *this*

http://xwing-builder.co.uk/build#

then as others have said, pick up the bagged card stacks i need and pick the upgrades etc out of them.

Takes very little time, all the time it takes is mainly in the choosing and the builder also only lets you pick stuff you own if you toggle the 'my collection' setting.

I use something like this:

hgqRdfC.jpg

as detailed in a recent post I made on storage solutions

It's basically a 20-pocket page made for coins, and the (sleeved) mini-cards come out of them a bit, but it's fairly stable, and apart from the upper row on the first page, things don't usually fall off. It's also very easy to take out upgrades (10-15 seconds for most squads). It even has space to stack duplicates, since it's made for thick coins, I usually don't carry more than 5-6 multiples per card, and they fit perfectly.

Edit: example of this item on Amazon. Not sure if it's the same one, but you get the idea. This should solve your problem and it's relatively easy to do.

Edited by chilligan

I just sort mine by type and stick em in a baggie jobs a goodun.