We got Elder Sign and wow, it is messy! Each component must be stored in bags and it barely fits into the cardboard insert. Something had to be done!
Planning
Elder Sign is a semi-simple game but with a lot of tokens and components. It has oversized Adventure- and Other World cards, and small item cards in different quality (normal, rare, ally and spell), as well as the small Mythos cards.
To keep track of our sanity (as it is a Arkam Horror-game) and stamina we have tokens for that, as well as Elder Signs, Doom tokens and Clues.
Finally we have the monsters, the dices and the player tokens and their oversized Investigator cards and the Ancient Ones.
When planning for making this organizer, I looked around at BoardGameGeek for inspiration. I found an image of an organizer made by the user TylerDax which served as the template from which I would make my plans.
Since he hadn’t shared any plans, I still had to make the entire thing from the ground up, all I knew is where to fit each piece, the rest I had to figure out myself.
Final thoughts
This is a great organizer that enhanced the game as a whole. The bottom layer never has to leave the box as it only contains things you take out once; The Investigator (and player tokens) and Ancient Ones is chosen during setup, the monsters are put in a bag or other container (I’m getting a bag soon) and the dices and the clock is taken out.
The top layer contains the token tray which is awesome – rather than having to spread out all the tokens freely on the board, the token tray keeps everything in place. Then what’s left of the layer can serve as a card tray if you want, or you can take out everything.
The Elder Sign organizer is a great example of how an organizer can make a game so much better. It not only reduces setup time, with the token tray it enhances the game by storing the tokens readily on the board for everyone to see, instead of having one person play the role of the ”Bank”.