For those inexperienced with game inserts, they’re basically third-party provided box organizers which allow owners of a game to fit as much as possible into the original game box. They can also make it so that pieces are easier to deploy and put away. Some of these are premade from foam core or plastic. Others, like the one to be discussed here, are wood but require self-assembly. Broken Token provided their Rising Sun Daimyo Collection Organizer for yours truly to try out in this edition of Level Up My Game.
As of this article, the Daimyo Collection Organizer costs $120 (Core Box Organizer – $70), so fans are going to really want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth when it comes to this insert. In the following article, we’ll take a look at build process, build quality, organization, and fit in the box.
Build Process
Readers would do themselves a huge favor by taking long looks at the photos presented with this article. The provided images are meant to give a clear picture of what comes in the box and the expectations around assembly. Since this is a product you build yourself, there’s a certain feeling of satisfaction of putting the whole thing together.
Upon opening the box, the instructions and stack of wood and plastic laser cut sheets will quickly show readers how involved this build is. Assembly involves snapping and pressing wood sheets of about 1-2mm thickness together to form different shaped trays. The cuts for these fittings are always spot on even down to less than a quarter of a millimeter (just eyeballing it) in accuracy. When the instructions say to put two pieces together, readers should know that they WILL fit together.
The other landmine to navigate is the amazing, overwhelming page identifying all the components of each sheet. During assembly, this is the one page readers will need to refer to at every step. If sight-impaired, be sure to have a magnifying glass handy.
The steps themselves are easy to follow. Granted, this is coming from someone who has built countless LEGO sets with ease and readily finds IKEA instructions easy to follow. Experience can vary if assembling an insert is a new challenge. The best recommendation would be to buy another, cheaper insert for a different game that Broken Token supports or watch their assembly video. This can give a general idea of the build skills needed and tolerance between wooden pieces.
Build Quality
This insert differs slightly from most offered by Broken Token. To support minis, snap-in clips from plastic layers have been added. This allows the plastic bases to easily group into a single tray for storage. Another addition are clear plastic card dividers. While not necessary, these were a nice touch.
Once assembled, the clan trays felt sturdy, but a little fragile. The end resulting trays are not things to be casually thrown around as if it was single mold plastic. They can break, especially if too much pressure is applied in the wrong way during construction (which only happened once and was easily repaired). However, for organization’s sake, the trays function better than the original plastic trays since everything is labeled and easy to stow back in the box during play.
Organization and Fit
This writer really has to hand it to Broken Token on this insert. The journey from what is received to a fully constructed final product takes patience and determination. However, it is extremely impressive to see it all together. Just when it feels like everything from the original box will not fit; it all comes together almost perfectly.
“Almost perfectly” means that there are some small caveats. The second (Daimyo) box will have trays that exceed the height of the original box contents. In addition, once the player screens and rules are included, the core box lid is offset by about half a centimeter. This is understandable given the extra content.
As far as giving a more optimum experience in play, the biggest benefit is being able to give a player a single tray of pieces. Mostly the other bonus is organization of pieces to reduce the amount of boxes to carry and better transport the various expansions.
Conclusion
The Rising Sun inserts provided by Broken Token are a quality product. They are designed well and given how much stuff they need to organize, they perform as advertised. The one aspect of this product to take a second look as is the price of course, since the value offered greatly depends on personal needs of organization. However, owners of the Daimyo pledge level for Rising Sun would be hard pressed to find anything else that offers a similar level of performance outside of designing something themselves.
