Chit Chat - Episode 11 - The Good and the Bad of Board Game Inserts

on Emma sewed 11 of chit-chat we get inside the box and explore the world of board game inserts we take a look at what some of the best publishers are doing to organize their components and of course talk about all of the games we've been playing welcome back to chit chat this is episode 11 and today we're gonna not talk about board games at all we're gonna talk about board game inserts actually we will probably talk games too but we're gonna start by talking about inserts and by that we mean inserts third party inserts inserts from the publishers themselves and even maybe some do-it-yourself inserts like when you put plain old boxes in some of the games yeah that was always we got Ryan we got Gary myself David and Jeremy here on the end so let's start talking about insert I think it's important that we also say this isn't a declaration or a call to riot against the publishers no the way they make inserts lists it says nothing to do about our feelings about board games about the games that we're playing just about how games are packaged because it's all about accessibility in the end right this isn't like digital media where you have a video game that you download right or a movie that you just pop it and kind of get it one way right I mean you get a board game and then it's all physical components you have to set that thing up which means that the better it's organized the more often you're going to get it to the table mm-hmm so this is all about organization yeah that's right especially those games they have just tons of pieces oh yeah there's a lot of truth to that use your game is to set it up the more often I feel like playing it well not only that but with some of these inserts it's kind of like a moment of pride when you open that box and you pull out yeah really cool insert components that are just as cool if not cooler than the game components and people are like oh that's cool and you're like yeah that's right it is and it makes you want to go back and play those games again right right yeah well then there's the other side where you're like oh this game's gonna be great they like ooh coupons you open up and it's just all kind of thrown in there yeah you know and that's for me that's a little frustrating because you know this is an industry you know some of these games are in your 40s 50 60 70 $80 ranges yeah and I would expect a little effort at least to make especially got a lot of components to have something where you can you easily organize all those pieces let's start there I mean when you talk about any particular publisher there'd be Fantasy Flight or C Mon or any of these larger publishers there's a wide gambit in the way that they packaged absolutely just C Mon in general and you look at like ethnos it comes with a molded insert but everything is going to pop in the right location then you look at games like Rising Sun which just came out which have all those type of games have miniatures come in these weird box basically boxes and boxes boxes with in bars and once you look at all those components they're hard to store back because you have to fight fit them in the right areas if you decide not to go that route then you're going to Theatre third party you know accessories or you're just putting them in bags and throwing them back in the back right so those games like Rising Sun like blood rage for sure those are the prime opportunities yes people like broken token and meeple Realty to make an amazing insert because I don't know that anyone likes the boxes and boxes I mean that's a lot - you're putting away in a box then you're putting that box in a box and another box yeah distorted it's hard to keep track of everything because a lot of times you end up with boxes getting put in different places and especially a game like blood rage where you might have four or five boxes rising the Sun is the same way yeah I think there's like five boxes of content and it's like you put the wrong piece in the wrong box well and plus a lot of people like to consolidate and when you've got those boxes and boxes and boxes games you can't write right like it's just impossible you're gonna keep the expansions in the expansion box right most people I think right don't want to do that I think so yeah the broken I have the broken token insert for blood rage and it was almost as much as the game itself but it was one of the anybody services I've ever made because everything is clearly labeled everything fits in one box I could pull things out as I need them and everything that you store the pieces in you just pop it out and it sits on the table and you just pull your tokens out so what kind of you said you have the blood rage broken token one you have any other inserts like third party um no that's my only that's your only insert Gary what about you I don't have any actual 0n0 the reason is because sometimes it's a struggle for me to rationalize spinning almost another whole game just to get an insert to put in the game and if I'm not going to play the game a lot to me it's I'm just not going to put you know the money in I told but a game like blood rage which I've played a ton of times I would love to have it I just never have gone out and got then the purchase and that's the way I think I would approach it too like we have pretty big collections you cannot you can't possibly get an insert for every clutch right and if it were available so I would look at the games that are like sort of my flagship games if you will mm-hmm and the ones that I want to treat well and really holds dear in my heart and maybe get something like that for those games yeah I mean you guys already know how I feel about inserts I love inserts going back to when I was doing videos by myself you know 78 years ago they were built around the components it was called tracking strikes components breakdown and everything I did was organized in those Plano boxes right I love organization so anytime that a company makes an effort to at least ship the game organized is great but when they do things like game trays when he starts looking like grim forest oh yeah the public the newest publisher in space Express yeah those kind of things are above and beyond and I think that is a step in the right direction for right those games what it comes down to though is its its cost its sure how well do these publishers think that game is going to sell is it going to hit mass-market and if they think that's the case then they'll invest a little bit more on those type of inserts otherwise you're going to get the cardboard inserts with a little rivet down the side right for the most case those inserts like you said it comes down to cost and whether or not they're gonna get mileage out of that is I guess remains to be seen but I can tell you for instance with grim forests the few times I've played that with people who hadn't seen it yet you open it up and the experience of those people seeing the inserts and this one in particular you're pulling the inserts out you just popping the lids off and the trays just sit right out on their table that's where the components stay you take them right out of that tray so it makes it such a nice experience even non-gamers have experienced that and said wow this is that's really cool that's a nice game so you know if that means another sale or another sale or two then that's some mileage that I think the publishers will get you know another game that did that amazingly last year it was mechs burst minion yeah yes I do you showed it to me you had to go you got a look at this you open it up I mean it's like an engineering masterpiece an audience experience and it looks ice and it's all organized and that is just one of the best examples of you really want to do a game right that you know you got a winner and you wanna make some sells sales you know get this insert right it just it makes people feel like they've really invested in something nice it is it's an interesting point you made there because it reminds me of like you see a lot of these unboxings on YouTube of all sorts of things and it started with tech stuff like computers and whatnot right and you see these unboxings than these really high-end devices the boxes themselves are really cool you've got magnetic flaps which is a big win for me anything you put a magnetic flap in a box you sold for me you open that up and then their sleeves and there's like little sheets of paper that your yep that experience just heightens the quality you know aspect of what you're doing or whatever it is whether it's a game or what not and that's mixers minions was totally that yeah it totally up to everybody's game obviously grim forest has taken a page out of that book and which is good I think again we're back to your investment that you're making I mean no games are luxury you don't need games in your life but when you do and you're gonna put money toward them you would like a little seed a little effort also made inside to make it even look nicer and to help you organize and people notice that when you break it out like wow that's really nice well we'd like to get one of those we've come a long way too I mean when we were kids games were the box right and loose pieces that all I have you open the box there's just a bunch of plastic bags yeah well and that's that's another thing you mentioned DIY earlier I mean at the very minimum we all bag arson yeah right like the the games that come with a bunch of pieces we're getting I just went to Hobby Lobby the other day and buy 150 bags put some I've stacks and stacks and that works fine too because I was thinking about this and the experience of bagging the games components it makes you remember how it was stored yeah maybe even more so than some of these third-party inserts there's been some of these third-party inserts I take the game out and I'm like oh wait a minute where did this one go and how does this fit together it's almost a game in itself not only that but when you organize a game back into the box you're setting it up for your next play exactly one of the I want to bring up was a grand Austria Hotel a game that my wife had been playing a lot I use these little twister caps that you got a hobby and dust them off and then you put them on the bottom and twist them back on so they're eight they'll never spill over mm-hmm but when I put all those components in there they're ready for the next game like I and if I'd leave that game and don't come back for six months and forget how to play which is you know happens to us all time with playing so many games I'm gonna automatically know that this day is different from the other components in the game so it's going to help me relearn that game all right immediately and the case where all these games come in boxes and they're just bags it's it's it's a different feel if you don't take that initiative but the company doesn't take initiative to supply bags or to at least do some kind of organization within the box itself that's a good point too even those twisty things that you've been getting compared to the plain old boxes that you've done - mm-hmm when I've done the planar boxes which is nice just to keep them so they're not loose yeah but you you can hardly ever use the components out of the plain old box in most cases unless it's a bigger one when you give those smaller plain old boxes like I have for castles of Burgundy mm-hmm everything's packed in there so yeah it's out of there you're like using your finger they pull them out one at a time and then like you said you have to remember okay which tiles if you haven't played the game in a while you have to men remember things mm-hmm when they're in separate bags that were better yet those twisty things you just put it all out and you're like okay I remember what it looked like on the table last time though that's right that's really cool about wasteland Express yeah that not only are they put in there every component is labeled in that box too so if you forget what a component is it's labeled right there like RT in the insert which I would love to see more companies do and also we have to talk about the flip side of this you know when you have a company like game Trace when a publisher goes out and they want to make a game they'll approach game cherries don't say these are the components that are going in this box and you open that box and it's experience like grunt forest there's also on the flip side when expansions will be inevitably released you then have another problem about how are those new components going to fit inside of this box no yeah there's a couple good examples of that everyone knows I love seasons as much as I love that game and there's two expansions for it you the insert when I bought seasons originally I was so person a murder with me insert because it was perfect everything just fit in there one in one expansion later and then you're filling that one sort of bin area in the insert with all sorts of stuff right like loose cards loose bits all sorts of different things and then you had another expansion gets even worse and then the amount of cards to there's nice card areas but there's just enough cards to where it makes the Box sit not completely shut and it's still okay but it really kind of washes away the entire aspect that that insert was good I'll give you another example five tribes yeah it's a game that I absolutely love I own all the expansions but now there's no place to put anything right so I actually opened this one up the other day because I was going to play it with Sarah and I looked I was like I don't even know where to begin now like I've got three different rule books in here I don't know what components are mixed with what and there's just stuff everywhere because originally it fit perfectly now it's all mixed I've got another gripe about five tribes now you mentioned and again I feel comfortable griping because I love the game yeah but that insert Ryan and I were just talking about this there's these two rows on the outside edge so for coins I don't know what I've always put in those two rows as I've put the palaces in one of them right perfectly right and then you put the palm trees in the other and they they work but two palm trees don't well and this brings up two things one that was sort of like I'm just mildly annoying right but the other thing is when games do have an insert that's a really good one and it's designed and engineered put a page in your manual that says here's how to put the stuff away in insert I would like that if some do you're a rare but it is nice you look at this insert like one I don't know how to put this together which we'll probably talk about right and then where do these pieces go and I think and you're talking about more components and like you know maybe chits and stuff one of my big complaints is it on inserts when they give you an insert awesome great okay my best examples ethnos okay I sleeve cards I know some people out there don't sleep card that's dumb hey I do deal with it yeah all right I sleep my cartridge on you're gonna be dealing with your a lot and the cards fit fine and ethnos without the sleeves you put the sleeves on them it doesn't fit in that's so so many and it bounces up and it's all this like renegades Clank did it awesome they made that space if you sleeve the cards it'll still fit enough so they can ship in there I don't know why so many rights because yeah once the cards are sleeved they don't fit legendary which I love legendary Marvel legendary and they were this is the rare example where they were actually forward-thinking yeah and that they left spots for the expansion so you have plenty of room to store all the expansions if you don't sleeve them but as soon as you sleeve them laughs anymore yeah like hey it's just they don't think that people are gonna sleeve them or they don't plan for that sleeving process but heck I mean sell your own sleeves build it for that you know right yeah yeah blood rage on blu-ray blood-borne is another one it doesn't it doesn't fit so I tossed the insert yeah what is it card sleep it's like confusing so many all the time I've got an interview I'm sure we all may toss and and we love you FFG but those inserts I think are universally despised certs I've got they're awful once you punch everything there's those inserts even called an insert it's just it's like you think the mentality with FFG is that they know they're going to have 20 expansions for the games and they doesn't all lose I think that's a madness the first thing I did was throw away the insert by a play no box yeah yeah that takes up half the space in there anyway yeah in a box of those work well the last thing on inserts at least the last thing I have and and this this is an example and again we love this game - we all love Baron Park I think we all own Baron Park but this wins the prize this is the insert which is a lip and then and I think everyone out there yeah this does anyone still yet know exactly how this is supposed to be it's it fits in there diagonally yeah one of them goes in one for the other corner the other ones basically makes no three little bit some of the boards for publishers I mean this is a no we're not calling you guys we're simply saying that for at least us and we could be different than other gamers but for enthusiasts gamers having that accessibility and efficiency when you're pulling out a game mean something to a lot of people so take a little bit of time to look at the engineering and structure of your box and how you package that game because if you have future expansions in mind think about that you really think about that and think about things being sleeved and how people that are true gamers yep how they will treat that material yeah and then how often they'll get that game back to the tape and if you want to see what I think at least is sort of the gold standard right now take a look at grim for us for sure that thing is just insane it's perfect now I'll say right now and I'd say this to James with expansions I'm not sure how that's going to work either sure but right now it is an incredible experience in terms of getting that out of the box and onto the table and playing almost immediately yep I think I would actually rather I would rather not have an insert at all than one that was junkie or that doesn't fit everything once it's all punched truly oh yeah that's the other end of the spectrum for sure we've all had inserts you sometimes not even made out of like really chintzy plastic or something like that this is kind like crumbled or like an crush yeah you know you just get rid of those so if you have to do an insert I guess what Ryan saying do a good insert yeah otherwise don't do one at all if you don't work with third-party people like broken token I mean yeah ya know any of those companies and saying we have a cool game here our components make something cool for us because there are people that will buy it oh absolutely maybe so that's inserts let's talk about the weekend games that we've been playing we've been blunt I've been playing it on the game what have you been playing all right I just I want to say that I'm finally caught up with you guys you're not still playing Azul I finally got on your page I finally played Santa Maria oh and it is fantastic I wish I had played it before we did our top ten show if you can change her to you it would have ended up on my top 10 I think that game is just it's so good oh good Wow I just blew me there's a lot of controversy on that game for the colonization background to it we understand that but as far as a game is related it's it's a super solid game oh yes just a joy to play for her well I've been playing as you all know I've been playing pulsar still I mean I get on these games with my group and every time they come over they're like oh we want to play a pulsar dinner we want to play Zul again just everybody loves these games yeah sure basically I haven't played a whole time I did to get to go over some friends the other night they're not really gamers but they had some parents in and I took they go bring something over so I took over as ool yes that was a winner they wanted to buy it yeah you have to wait it's you know done print and then we did down force which they loved that's just so easy it's say you plugged it down for me I played a lot of down lately yeah but I'm looking forward to tomorrow night because I'm going my one group I played my first pandemic season one with I haven't played with them in a while but I'm gonna go over there tomorrow nighttime they do want to learn Santa Maria and I'm hoping to teach in Bruges really they want to learn that as well and will this be the first time you break out the pet the animals I in Bruges because I even played with animals yet so it's easy I'm in there yeah so yes I'm pumped about playing that so and probably Azul this shows not brought so I've been playing a lot of games so everyone settle in well first of all Jeremy and I had a chance to play Kamisama with Travis and AJ the design from colossal this is AJ's first game first game and we had a really fun game area control some pretty inventive mechanics mm-hmm where the board rotates but we played that one just days ago earlier this week very good prototype form is still really good played got plans of Caledonia back to the table last weekend last week oh I I really like that game for that type of game which is not usually the weight that I play right I'm really getting into that one for sure which brings me to my next one I finally tried Terra Mystica online online online but I tried it I learned that Marty kaan Connell from rolling dice rolling dice and taking names was nice enough to teach me online a two-player game so it wasn't exactly the perfect experience for Terra Mystica yeah because the map doesn't change so you're not very spread out and two players don't really interact with each other too much sure but I know how to play so that's the did you win I didn't win but he's played before and he only beat me by a handful of points so I felt pretty good about there you go good God yeah we played that on Steam and the app is it works really nice cool thing about that app by the way too is if you have it on iOS you can actually play cross-platform Steam versus I oh yeah yeah which I didn't even know a lot of games or any games did that yeah so we'll have to try that sometime other than that Oh Raiders of the North Sea mm I gotta say you know Jeremy was singing this the praises of this game the last couple weeks and I tried it with him and I tried it with my group I'm gonna play it again this weekend really really good game this is one of those games where it it kind of starts out some could say that starts out a little slow because there's a whole top part of the board that you really can't access until you really get things going so you have to kind of prepare your Vikings at first and then boom you start to go out on raids and then the cool you know other hand to that is the game accelerates and you start scoring points and it starts going really fast and all the boys board starts clearing out really good game and beautiful artwork yep so that's what I've been pulling we played a lot against us which is a review on that one so check out what online it's a good game it's actually being drunk kickstart Luksa fight from the BMG as well looks awesome I've been playing a lot of Grand Austria hotel again yeah yeah this is a weird I mean I I have a really bad habit of calling my games and I don't know why I called that game I dunno I had a really at four player experience with it was just like two and a half three hour game too long and then you reintroduced it to me a couple weeks ago yeah couple weeks ago and the two-player experience in that game is it's it's really one of the best two-player games period it's so solid and so we've been playing the heck out of that game 232 points he started a game with me mm-hmm and it was going out of control and we had to visually and we played Kamisama because Travis showed oh yeah so we had to pause and then his wife finish the game yeah but you ended up going to 32 points which is ridiculous in that game yeah what's your high score in that - 17 what's your low and that 45 and be supported that's right I'm like in this I contend plagued inkopolis again which is such a solid although z-man game it's a beard that's what I want to learn he also did Carson City and tois really good that out-of-print oh it's been my preference oh yeah it's hard to find yeah dinosaur island we've played that twice now it's actually a really good game I did our first experience with the game was a prototype any time you play a prototype it's really hard to get an idea of what the game looks like we had the mole we have the rules the rules weren't done a lot of the tiles had written words you could barely read yeah but we've played it multiple times it's solid and when you play if you play the game and you're a game or play the long game because the median game is way too short even for gamers but the long game is a good hour hour and a half so you really feel like you're building up your Park fantastic also I'm looking at our table our wall here I trade it for merchants and routers because of you and bought the expansion because I really want to play this game right yeah me too it's been a while since we played it we just got Rising Sun so we're gonna play it tonight and then we also played Dark Souls the card game yeah which really cool really it's really good steam forged yeah it's a really cool just basic card game but again just like their original Dark Souls it really kind of captures the theme of darks I'd say it captures that theme even more so and I would really puts in your face that whole concept of like pushing your luck yep do we go on to the next encounter risk losing our souls and our equipment or do we go back and use the bonfire but when use the bonfire it's the tick that time that's taken away it's a it's a deck building game but it's one of the most unique deck building games I've ever seen because you're not it's not like a traditional deck builder you're like it you're like building like like a constructed almost like a magic deck where you're counting how much energy you're generating how many weapons well there's a finite you harness to you can only have like 28 cards to begin with and then after the first bonfire that goes to 31 and and what's really cool about the deck building is you have off to the side just stamina which powers all of your equipment in the game that's what you're buying the getting Lance but but the way you build your deck is from going out into the outer world and killing mobs killing monsters all those go to a community pool and then as a group you decide hey you just have this card or you can have this car because it's good for your deck so there's a real sense of cooperation and community in that game it's really cool it was a much more streamlined experience I thought then the board game your brother game yeah I like it a lot and we'll get a review out of that one yeah soon as well so that's so that's what we've been playing and that is going to wrap it up for this episode of chit chat thanks again for watching definitely check us out on Twitter follow us on Facebook all of that and like some comments in the in the comments I guess or anywhere you can because some of the topics that we talked about tonight were directly from people well and let us know what you guys think about inserts as well it's important job like ending a lot of publishers listen in on this type of thing if you go out how do we tailor again what I wanted once what is the best broken token or it like what is the best insert out there yeah I might not even know that there's a cool insert for there's a lot of ya might even get you to try a game - yeah it could be that good alright thanks a lot for watching everybody bye bye you [Music]

Channel: Man vs Meeple

Views: 6,367

Rating: 4.8469944 out of 5

Keywords: The Broken Token, Broken Token, Meeple Realty, Rising Sun, Pulsar 2849, Grand Austria Hotel, Dinosaur Island, Kami Sama, Western Legends, HATE, Board Games, Boardgames, Dice Tower, Watch It Played, Gen Con, Essen, Origins, Santa Maria, Game Wire, Magic the Gathering

Id: ObZ9Po-STwo

Length: 26min 8sec (1568 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2018