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When you have a game with as many components as Talisman, you will soon find that the box for the main game is not going to be big enough to store everything. Many people have come up with storage solutions, and e-Raptor have been doing that for the last few years by creating trays and boxes suitable for many different game systems.
They have a collection of storage options for Talisman (or similar games like Relic and DungeonQuest) that has been available in Europe for some time, and have recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help bring this collection to the American market.
The collection is made up of a mix of laser-cut plexiglass and plywood components, which are well packaged and individually boxed. Some of these require assembly and others are ready to go out of the box. There is no gluing required for the plywood components, as they all slot together easily and securely. The only tool you are likely to need is perhaps a small hammer to tap the dowels into place in the dice tower.
I must admit that I have a bit of a thing for laser-cut wood and love the idea of a catch-all storage solution for Talisman, so this collection is just the job. I might even have to get hold of some extra token boxes for general storage of knick-knacks about the house!
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| A rather impressive package! | The contents, including Dice Tower (Slim) in bubble wrap | ||
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| 2 x Card Holders (5S Solid) | 2 x Token Boxes (L) | ||
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| 6 x Character Trays | 1 x Big Box (Claws) | ||
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| Plenty of room in here! | |||
Each of the card holders has five sections that will take around 104 sleeved cards, or 162 cards without sleeves. As an illustration of this you can see a fully sleeved base game stored in one of the holders below, and next to it is a full set of unsleeved Adventure and Spell cards from the base game to The Firelands expansion.
Of course, in practice you would probably need to leave a slot free for discards, but for storage you can fit every small card from Talisman to date into the two card holders that come with this package.
The token boxes are easily big enough to take all of the tokens from the game but, as I already have a bag for all of the Dragon tokens, I modded one of the boxes slightly using strips of card (14cm, folded at 4cm from each end) in order to keep all of the tokens separated.
You can see in the video over on the Kickstarter page that all of the large cards from the game (Characters, Endings etc.) can be put into the second token box by removing two of the dividers which still leaves one section for more cards or tokens. You could even decide to use the second box without any dividers and store the miniatures for the game instead.
The character trays are a useful addition to the game with indentations to stop the cones and coins from moving about the table, along with slots to keep cards from your inventory. As you can see below, I have only used the top section of the tray to display Spells, Alignment cards and Trophies and will likely continue to put Objects and Followers below the tray in order that the other players can keep track of possessions.
When all of the cards are stowed in the holders and the tokens are safely in the boxes, you can then stack everything inside the large box along with the boards and rule books from every expansion to date and there is even room for the Dragon tokens in their special “Dragon Scale” bag. You might want to take a look at e-Raptor’s Dice Bag M which seems like it will do the job nicely.
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| All small cards from the base game in FFG sleeves | Unsleeved Adventure and Spell Cards for all expansions | ||
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| Token Box modded with cardboard dividers to accommodate all Tokens | Character Tray with Spells, Alignment and Trophies at top | ||
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| Everything fits nicely into the Big Box, including the Rules, Boards and Dragon Tokens | |||
For the ideal loadout I’d consider swapping the dice tower for one of the e-Raptor 6S DIY card holders. These are ideal for displaying the six Purchase/Shop decks in easy reach of everyone, or it can be used for smaller decks from the game like Warlock Quests, Talismans etc.
I also think that it would be nice to see a holder similar to the card holders, but obviously larger (!), so that you can have all of the large cards out in the playing area for people to access easily.
For now though, the collection of storage options is pretty good and you can always optimise your loadout by sticking on a couple of add-ons from the e-Raptor catalogue, like additional card holders or a larger dice tower. I suppose if you were to ask nicely, they might add some of their other products to the mix.
As an aside, because Fantasy Flight Games produce a whole range of games that use similar components, so with a couple of alterations this box could be suitable for a number of games such as Descent and Battlestar Galactica. Please make sure of your requirements before you stump up the cash for one though!
At the time of publication the Kickstarter is nearly halfway to its goal and there is still plenty of time to take advantage of the campaign!