I was hanging out at my FLGS recently ( in Gillette, Wyoming) with my Dice Masters collection conducting some trades and grabbing a pick up game here and there when someone asked me the question. You know, the big question: "How do you store your Dice Masters?" It's possible that I smiled and got excited, because the little things like game storage tend to make me happy, but I won't confirm nor deny that. In any case I showed the person what I use and how I use it and I figured, why not share my storage method with The Reserve Pool Community?
When it comes to collecting and storing I try to keep it as clean and simple as possible. When I played MtG for a few years I utilized cardboard card storage boxes and the nifty little Ultra Pro Deck Boxes. When you're mixing up dice and cards, though, you have to attack it from two different angles. I didn't want dice rolling around in cardboard and getting super mixed up, and I wanted an easier way to browse the somewhat limited number of cards between the two available sets without having to thumb through a long deck box. So, here's where I landed.
First, I got a simple three ring binder and filled it full of pocket pages. I sorted my cards first by set and then alphabetically. This goes counter to either organizing them by rarity or number in the set, but I had my reasons. See, number doesn't matter to me when I'm grabbing up cards to build a team. Aside from the fact that the numbers follow alphabetically, it makes more sense to me to have the 3 - 4 cards of each character sitting together for easy viewing. I keep a separate page at the back of the set to organize basic action cards and their placeholder colored cards. The very back page of my binder holds the promo cards I've won or been given by playing in the OP events.
Second, I found some very handy bead storage boxes at Wal-Mart for about $6. These are nice because they have rounded compartments, which makes it very easy to scoop out dice. Also, they come with 32 slots. In both my AvX and UXM sets I have a complete set of dice. This means that only my bottom few compartments have to be doubled up - everyone else gets their own living space. I like that.
Third, I keep a final very small tackle box to keep all my extras in - SideKick dice, BAC dice, dice bags, cards for trade, counters - everything else. That one cost me about $4. All told, with my binder, two dice sets boxes and my third accessory box, I can drag my entire collection around in a my shoulder bag. Easy, simple and efficient - just the way I like it!
What about you? How do you store your collection? Maybe mine is too bulky - is there a better way? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
- Chris
I sort my cards (by set) in this order:
ReplyDeleteEnergy Type (Alphabetical) > Purchase Cost (low-high) > Alphabetical
I have 8 tabbed dividers (4 for each set) for quick access.
For dice storage I picked up two plano cases that hook back-to-back with each other, each one has a handle to carry the whole thing around like a briefcase. In one I keep all X-Men and the other I keep Avengers. I merge duplicate characters from both sets and characters that are connected in some way (Illyana & Collosus etc). The large compartments I use for sidekicks, Basic Action dice and Villains.
Very nice! As long as you know how to get around in your own collection, that's what matters! :)
DeleteI use two Dragon Shield 4-compartment storage boxes: One for cards (incl. basic actions and the coloured backers) and one for dice (incl. my dice bag and a D20 for determining who goes first and as a life counter for my opponent if he/she doesn't have a playmat).
ReplyDeleteNice! That's a good way to handle it.
DeletePlano boxes (3700 series) work fine. You may run out of dividers though and packing too many dice in may make it trickier to get them out, but they work overall.
ReplyDeleteBrad, do the Plano 3700s have square or round bottoms for the compartments? I switched from the Planos I had because it was near impossible to get those dang dice out of their spots! :)
ReplyDeleteI've thought a lot about storage, as you'll discover if you wade through and read this entire comment (not recommended unless you're also storage obsessed). What I'm doing now is OK, but not what I want to be doing long-term.
ReplyDeleteCURRENT SETUP:
For cards, I sleeve and put into 9-card pages in a binder. The binder has a section for characters, basic action cards, and "special stuff." In the characters and basic actions sections, it is divided by set and then listed alphabetically. The basic action color cards and collectors checklist cards are stored here too. The special stuff section contains the OP cards.
For dice, they are just in boxes meant to hold cards, kinda like this: http://tinyurl.com/lab4t6l. I made simple cardboard dividers to keep various characters' dice separate in the box. I keep a spare card (if I have one) next to the dice in these boxes too so that I can pull the card and dice from the same spot.
For holding an individual team, surely I'm not the first person to notice that using a box meant to hold a deck of standard playing cards is pretty ideal. Bicycle cards' boxes are slightly too narrow, but if you look at the store you'll see wider boxes. The playing card box will obviously hold your cards, but it will also hold up to 35 Dice Masters dice with them. 20 teamdice + 8 sidekickdice + 6 action dice = 34 dice. I intend to buy one of those small d20s (for health tracking), putting that in the 35th die spot.
SO THAT'S NOW, BUT HERE'S WHAT'S PLANNED:
I'm building "Foambox 3000: The Future of Dice Masters Storage,™" ready to revolutionize Dice Masters storage! :-) It's an expandable (thinking of the future) foam core system consisting of trays each holding 40 sets of dice in groupings of 4 (most common max dice), for a total of 160 dice per tray.
(160 is just enough for max dice of AVX and a bit of extra room for UXM. DC is 40 characters, right? So if that's 4 max dice per character then that'll be perfect for DC. Yugioh appears to have 40 different commons alone, so I'm not sure how well this will hold up for that set, but at least one of them is max dice of 1 though, also visible in the same video, so maybe 160 dice will be enough. DnD? No clue how many dice).
The trays are stackable. I'm experimenting with a coating that gives them a pro look and feel. The trays are designed to sit in an outer box that has another compartment that sits along side them. This compartment is holds the cards for each set as well as other bits (dice bags. etc). Because the trays are shallow compared to the size of a card, cards from different sets need to co-exist in this tall compartment. I could use dividers to break those cards up by set, but instead I sleeve each set of cards with a different color backing of sleeve, so I can easily spot what goes where. I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate that color somehow into each of the trays to make the matching of cards to dice even nicer.
If I get extra time, I will also be building super-shallow "trays" that go in the tray area which come out and become your playmat. There would be 3 of these special trays (play area, left-side team cards/dice, right-side team cards/dice). They would incorporate some niceties like recesses for your team cards and each individual unpurchased die next to the cards to hold everything in perfect OCD-compliant order when you're playing. The middle play area might also incorporate a shallow dice tray to avoid losing dice when rolling--still working on that design.
The outer box is sized to mix well with other board games on the shelf. Anyway--all of the above is the theory. I've just started building Foambox 3000: The Future of Dice Masters Storage™ (must be said with the subtitle! :-). But I have nice sketches already. (That counts, right? :-)
Yeah, I'm a bit storage-obsessed. I'd be happy to do an article for the site when done if you want.
Sign me up for the Foambox 300 KickStarter! :)
DeleteI use this because it is relatively small and thin. Each row holds 3x2x40 dice (stacking 2 tall, 3 wide, 40 across) but the smaller one is 2x2x25 dice. I have the dividers separating out each character with a little extra space so I can grab them out easily. It holds everything from 1 set if you use the dividers for each character or two sets if you sort just by set or just by energy type. You can also remove the row dividers and it fits the cards, bag, rules, etc nicely.
ReplyDeleteFor the cards, I have them alphabetical by character. Within that each character is sorted by the set it came in if it appeared in different sets. Beyond that, they aren't sorted further. BACs are sorted by cost because I'm usually searching for one to use by cost unless I have a very specific one in mind.
Awesome - that definitely looks usable!
Delete