I have loved this game for 30 years or so... back to those expansions sold in baggies hanging on the game store racks. This new FFG version is a worthy entry into the family. Nice job to the folks at FFG.

But, what is up with the box it comes in? Am I the only one who thinks the inside package design is just about the worst ever for a game with lots of pieces? The left side of the box has a single hole the size of the cards. But putitng the cards in that hole is totally pointless. So what is that hole for? And the center section holds the Powers and the Ships and the Cards, okay, but the rest of the stuff has to go in the left side, you know, with the hole... And most of the big pieces have to go under all the cardboard insert as they are too wide for the center section. And the space on the right is just totally wasted. The first idea is to just pitch all that insert cardboard, but what if your a collector type individual... Did you just kill the value of the orginal box in 30 years. (not really an issue for me).

The Mayfair version had a molded plastic tray that held cards and such. I understand cost as an issue. But it just seems like they should never have even bothered with the cardboard insert, leave the box as a box and save some money and a few trees (as I'm sure most people will just pitch the insert the first day).

Sorry, I just had to mention this, as petty as it may be. CE gets A+. Package design is an F.

-David

I'm one of the --- "out with the insert and in with the ziploc" --- kind of gamers so to me it wasn't even an issue when I looked at it. I'm just glad they made the box big enough to carry all of the impending future expansions.

I kept the insert and put things in baggies, one for the Grudge and Cosmic tokens and the tech pieces, and one for each set of planets, ships and score counter. And then, to be really OCD about things, I found some colored elastics and wrapped the sorted alien flares in green, yellow and red (I'm playing with newbies, so it's going to be just green powers for a while).

However, ITA with the size of the pieces: after everything is punched out of the cardboard, there is no place in the box that the Warp fits well if you keep the insert. It doesn't fit in the center well at all (at least not flat), and if you put it on one of the side shelves of the insert it hangs over the center well, so putting it under the insert probably won't work well, either.

Everything else is wonderful, though!

I love the new set, but I'm still holding onto my old baggies of goodies. Maybe FFG will put out a plastic tray insert that we can put in the big box (love the feel of the box, so smooth but textured) to hold all of the many many expansions we'll be seeing soon. Hint hint!

drswoboda said:

Personally, I don't know what you are talking about. When we were done with our game, we stuck the cards in the hole (meant we didn't have to get out a rubber band), and put everything else in the center. There was none of this putting the rest of the stuff in the left side, or putting stuff under the cardboard, or what-have-you.

So I didn't have any space problems.

Yeah, I don't get it either. The cards fit perfectly in the hole. It might become an issue in the future, if the size of the decks increase with expansions, but it's a non-issue at the moment. Aliens, planets and baggies of ships go in the center, and the warp and gate sit on top. Lots of extra room for expansions too. I think the box is great.

By the way, I think this is a sign that my level of OCD is declining in my old age.... You know the cardboard sheets the tokens are printed on? I guess some people might call them "sprues" or something. Well, I still have mine from the Eon set. 30-year-old cardboard sprues... in 6 colors.

However, I'm happy to say that I was able to part with the FFG sprues, with only a little bit of hand trembling and minor nausea. Progress!

Rubric said:

Now the healing can begin! *draws a card*

I still have all my old sprues, and there's quite a few of them (even silver and gold ones).... still waiting for a hole punch that can break through the cardboard cleanly, so I can make new tokens.... been waiting a looooong time.

My homebrew set has wooden tokens, and I printed the colors out on paper, which was made into stickers, cut with a hole punch, and then painstakingly peeled and attached to the wooden tokens (including punching white paper and sticking that the backs of all the tokens). Madness? You have no idea.

Rubric said:

Me too! I have the four colour "sprues" in my old CE set. I also have the leader sprues in my copy Dune.

This thread is bringing out all the oldies!

I first became aware of CE with the release of the Avalon Hill version. After doing some searching it became clear that I was being sold short on what was a game of significant venerableness (?). I had plans to homebrew a set in the back of my head for a long time, but I was overjoyed to hear that FFG was coming out with a re-print, because I'm used to a high level of quality with any game they set their mind to. Short of a snazzy movie-trailer video, I was pleased in every way with the final product.

With the amount of hobbyist prototyping I'm used to doing to make the creativity demons in my head be quiet (even for a moment), I'd gladly pay someone else to make the nicey-bits for me.

As for the OP, the cardboard structure that comes in the box does a good job of keeping the components from shifting during transport. If I were to remove it and baggie everything, it wouldn't be long before the decks and the bits started scuffing up against each other.

*whistles and waits for someone on BGG to generate Cosmic, Destiny, Tech, and Flare tuckboxen*

There are some tuckboxes on the CE page at BGG (and I put up a picture of how the look holding cards). I'm going to make another set myself, to create more room for expansion.

I think by the time game designers get to the interior of the box, the internal "tray" is the last thing they consider. I haven't had a single game box which could take the extra contents of an expansion. And the FF games, with their billions of separate card decks and tokens, are not easy to keep organized unless you are very OCD! I'm actually glad that CE has a fairly small number of components by comparison to many of their other offerings.

I went a little nuts and made my own insert out of a broken-down shoe box, so that it has two "valleys." Room enough for a lot of expansions.

The only thing I have trouble with is getting a grip on the cards to pull them out... The worst is when only the few on the ends are pulled up and your pinch ends up very nearly bending your cards... They're such nice cards too, it would be a shame...

I think I would pay up to $20 for a fancy, officially made plastic insert that has space for the warp and gate as well as a safer card-removal setup... It would be best if anything of the sort came after any planned expansions...

Q: What's with my box?

A: Someone stepped on it.

Sigh...

I have no idea what you are complaining about. I have my cards stored in the provided slot with no issues. They fit. They don't spill out. They don't get damaged. Far from worthless.

The large compartment holds everything else fine. I have each color of ships in its own bag. The rest of the stuff is just loose in the compartment. Everything fits fine. Even the alien cards fit in there perfectly. The warp and gate sit on top, then the rulebook is on top of those.

It all fits fine and stays in place. I don't understand the complaints at all.

That's a lot of tokens to just slosh around in there. Also, the cards can be difficult to take out, and if you don't get them just right, they'll spill beneath the box. It would have made more sense for the card slot to fold in on itself rather than just being a hole so that the cards couldn't slide out like that. Not that it's a big deal... it's a box. You say, Aw shucks for a second, then you get out the ziplock and rubber bands. Problem solved!

Wow, I do not get this thread at all. I don't even use that goofy card-slot, and everything fits just fine (I rubber-band my cards, if anyone cares).

After getting everything in, I've noticed that the box lid appears to "stick up" by a tiny, tiny amount, but I've noticed this about many of my FFG games, so I haven't given it a second thought. Until just now.

Yeah, my lid doesn't stick up at all... You may want to give the slot a chance...

Also, I just thought to add a bit of string looping underneath the cards for easier retreval... I'm going to go give that a shot right away...

i have developed the habit of throwing out each and every insert whenever i open a new game. custom storage solutions are not only practical, they are FUN

Yeah, I'm with the original poster- the section for cards is worthless to me, as if I put cards in there, within a few minutes they are scattered all over the inside of that section of the box, because nothing holds them in place at the bottom. Maybe my box is missing some of the cardboard for that section, but none of the edges of the 'card slot' reach the bottom, so the cards can scatter everywhere.

To the OP,

You're right about the problem with the bottom of the card slot. I ended up rubberbanding mine in separate stacks for each major card type, then dropping them into the slot. Before you comment on this, yes, the rubberband prevents it from fitting in directly. I end up placing them through the slot sideways, then turning them into place and they fit just fine. Thanks to the friction of the stacks of cards and the rubber between decks, whatever stack's on the bottom doesn't have any issues with sliding out of place. I agree that it could have been designed a little bit better overall, but once I started doing this I had more than enough space for everything. I agree that something designed to keep the Warp and especially the Gate safe in the box would be a huge improvement. It really does seem to be this way with way too many boardgames. The insets are really only designed around holding everything before it's opened. I can't count the number of games I had as a kid, such as Mousetrap, Life, the cheap version of Monopoly, and others that ended up with no inserts anywhere and we just ended up using plastic baggies and throwing it all in together. Not really an ideal solution and very few games seem to have solved the problem. Some of the higher end versions of Monopoly are excellent for holding all of the pieces, both while playing and in storage. Ah, well, guess that's how things go. At least the game's wonderful.

Crossfire503 said:

I don't get why I couldn't use normal copy and paste into the reply box. Anyway, are you saying that you put the cards in lying down ? I used relatively flat non-latex rubber bands and grouped the cards into Challenge, Tech, Destiny, and Red, Yellow and Green Flares, and I was able to stand all the cards up on their long edges in the slot similarly to the way they were originally shipped.

Yeah, mine are lying down now. seemed easier once I had the rubberbands on and was trying to figure out how to fit them into that slot.

The contents came undamaged and you're giving them an F?

Seriously, the most important purposes of a game box is advertising and making sure the contents are undamaged by the time you open the box. It's unfortunate that most game boxes make less-than-optimal storage containers (including the dreaded mass-market "game pieces under cardboard" insert), but many non-Euro games will have expansions, making the original insert pretty useless. FFG games have *lots* of little pieces, and many hobby gamers end up using plano boxes, anyway.

I put the sprues under the insert, and cram snack-sized ziploc bags of the player bits into the recess. The cards go back into the card slot. Haven't had any problems. May end up tossing out the insert when the next expansion set comes out.

I got went all OCD and created a custom insert out of plain cardboard. It has two valleys, one big enough for the powers, the other big enough for the boxes I keep the cards in. I put the instructions across the top just like with the original insert, and put the warp on top of that. Everything else just fits, with much room for expansions.