A Question of Logistics

By TheMadjai, in Arkham Horror Second Edition

I bought the Arkham base game, and most recently purchased the DH xpac. I've been reading everyone's thoughts on always combining the two and just redrawing cards if you're not playing with a particular element. My question is much more boring, though...

Where do you keep all the cards?

Neither box has room for both sets, and opening and setting up two boxes of stuff is annoying. Has anyone come up with a brilliant solution for this?

Far as I know, there's no easy solution, short of designing a custom container. I don't have Dunwich, but I do have two small box expansions, so I'll share what I've done. Not sure it'll help you, but: since Day One with the base set, I placed the monsters tokens in one small plastic bag, the gates in another, and the characters in another (with other important tokens, such as the one for the Terror Track or the First Player token, distributed among the latter two) and then placed these three bags along with all the other tokens inside one of the very large bags provided with the base game (and then stored this outside the box). As for cards, it's sort of inevitable that you have to store them in multiple boxes, but it's easiest if you divide them up among the boxes by type. Try putting all the location cards in one box and the mythos and gate cards in another. If the small cards won't fit in one box, take a certain type(s) of them (like the specials and the allies) and place it in a separate box from the others. Again, I don't have Dunwich, so I don't know how much storage space the box has.

Basically, the Dunwich box is a copy of the AH box. Same giant space at the top, three smaller compartments at the bottom, with the middle smaller compartment being designed to hold the small cards.

TheMadjai said:

Neither box has room for both sets, and opening and setting up two boxes of stuff is annoying. Has anyone come up with a brilliant solution for this?





I just removed the plastic insert in my AH box and can fit DH and KiY quite snuggly in it. Rubber bands and snack baggie ziplocs hold all my components. Probably have room for one or two more small boxes this way. I am working on a custom designed carring case. Will have space for all boards, all cards and tokens, and have a removable vertical tray to put location and investigator cards in. That tray will most likely be set up for AH and one big box and one small box expansion to be used at any time.

The logistics of arkham horror is an ever growing madness. I currently keep all the cardboard tokens and small cards in a tackle-box, all the large cards in one of those cardboard boxes made specificaly to carry cards and the boards, large sheets, monster tokens and stands in the original box.......and now that I've picked up the new Dark Pharaoh and Miskatonic Horror I have to reconfigure.

Asking how to store the game and all of its expansions is like asking what the meaning of life is. To which I will answer: "The meaning of life is finding the perfect storage solution for Arkham Horror and its expansions"

Seriously though...for me, I just used an extra "Descent" box. I divided all the cards by expansion and cards that can just be added to their respective decks. For example, all the mythos cards from all the expansions that do not require a extra board or small box was added to the main deck. This way, if I choose to play with something, all I have to do is add the cards to the main deck and presto...Mythos deck. Afterwards, I just go through the deck and pull out anything that was added (going by expansion symbol) and do a quick check to make sure all the right cards were removed. I do the same thing for all the other types of cards.

All the cards have their own custom made cardboard holders (like those found in Twilight Imperium) and set in the box. All the bits are stored in two small plano boxes sorted by things needed every game to the things needed for an expansion.

At some point, if I can figure how to post pictures on here I will show what I am talking about. Or maybe even post them on BBG.

I have a few plastic craft storage containers that I use for all of my game components, all purchased at Hobby Lobby.

For my tokens I have this .

For all of my cards I have 3 of these .

These work very well for my needs, though a bit bulky. I do have every expansion though. I had to buy a new case when I bought Miskatonic.

If you're looking for something a bit more elegant that should fit all of your components, including your boards, into one case, somebody found this and showed it to us on the forums not too long ago. Right here. In fact, I went out and bought this and use it to keep all of my investigator sheets, heralds, guardians, institutions, ancient ones, character tokens, monster cup, rule books, and boards and its fantastic. I still have plenty of room in there and I would say there's enough to fit all of the base game + DH components.

My problem is Tetrisly filling the components back into the big boxes alone, with all the expansions. It seems way easier now that we've got Miskatonic though, particularly since we removed the large plastic insert from that box, freeing about 2/3 extra space in the box.

Otherwise, decks are spread throughout all of the big boxes for us (which contain the small boxes). Every small-size-card deck is contiguous with the other cards, but the gate and mythos cards end up taking multiple slots in a box.

A while back a poster found some amazingly good artist boxes at Hobby Lobby, and I am using 2 of them as my storage solution. However, in recent months i've started sleeving the game using cheaper, thinner sleeves and the game is still expanding the room it takes up at an alarming rate. And hell, so far i've only managed to sleeve the thematic Ancient Ones cards and the Locations, and I'm through 800-900 sleeves!

My next purchase is probably going to be foamboard dividers for the game. This will let me customize the storage solution, and if I'm really good I'll even be able to make the dividers double as some sort of rack system for storing the cards while playing.

I own Innsmouth, Dark Pharoh V1 and Black Goat.

Like others I use a craft/hobby box for components (the dividers can can taken out to make larger compartments).

For cards I use several multi-tiered business card holders like these http://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/WSL-B2C-Site/en_NZ/-/NZD/ViewOfferDetail-Product?ProductRef=42368@WSL-B2C&SLIParameters=&w=Business%20Card%20Holder&view=list&sort=score&champ=1

I keep all of my location cards, plus all of the small cards (except common, unique and spell items) in the card holders. 1 location per space for the encounter cards. I then store all of my business card holders in a shoe box (the arkham box isn't tall enough). I then store everything else in the base game box.

The advantages of the card holders is that I can simply lift them out of the shoe box and they are ready to go; no need to separate the encounter cards out. Also, the card carders take up less space than having all of the cards scattered around the game board.

So basically I get everything into the base game plus a shoe box. While 2 boxes might not be what everyone is after I also cut down on set up and put away time.