Greetings! And I show off my custom case

[JRSly]

Hello all!

Just got A Touch Of Evil about a month ago and I fell in love instantly. Such great atmosphere with lots of replayability and ways to tweak and tune the experience. It's a really cool engine that's easy to modify and come up with homebrew ideas. My mind has already been churning around a few mechanic ideas and several Villains that will be fun to flesh out in the months to come.

And...on to the subject at hand. I've become quite obsessed with good storage and organization solutions and I knew I'd want to come up with an efficient way to store ATOE to make setup and breakdown as quick as I could, just to make it that much more pleasant an experience to play it. Often I can get by with tossing the original insert and making a new one from foamboard and buying a Plano box, but with ATOE and Something Wicked...that wasn't gonna work too easily. So I grabbed the Hobby Lobby art case that I'd originally bought to store Arkham Horror(I'll get to it some other day). And with just a little basswood and ribbon, I managed to fit everything in there nicely and logically. With, fingers crossed, room for "The Coast" and the Hero Packs. There's still some room for cards, and a few nooks and crannies to rethink the counters situation when I get new minions and various others. The only element I'm really worried about are the Hero and Villain cards...but I have some ideas on how to rearrange things when I get the expansions and might run out of room.



And since I used the wooden art case, instead of the original boxes, I thought I could add a little more theme to it and woodburned the logo on to the front. I'd never woodburned anything before and was a bit nervous about ruining it at some point and having to scrap the whole project, but it went smoothly enough and I'm really happy with it.



In fact, I was so pleased, I started envisioning putting together other boxes like this with similar woodburned logos. An Arkham Horror box, or two, would be cool as would Last Night on Earth.

[Kiddarqo]

(05-14-2012 03:52 AM)JRSly Wrote:  Hello all!

Just got A Touch Of Evil about a month ago and I fell in love instantly. Such great atmosphere with lots of replayability and ways to tweak and tune the experience. It's a really cool engine that's easy to modify and come up with homebrew ideas. My mind has already been churning around a few mechanic ideas and several Villains that will be fun to flesh out in the months to come.

And...on to the subject at hand. I've become quite obsessed with good storage and organization solutions and I knew I'd want to come up with an efficient way to store ATOE to make setup and breakdown as quick as I could, just to make it that much more pleasant an experience to play it. Often I can get by with tossing the original insert and making a new one from foamboard and buying a Plano box, but with ATOE and Something Wicked...that wasn't gonna work too easily. So I grabbed the Hobby Lobby art case that I'd originally bought to store Arkham Horror(I'll get to it some other day). And with just a little basswood and ribbon, I managed to fit everything in there nicely and logically. With, fingers crossed, room for "The Coast" and the Hero Packs. There's still some room for cards, and a few nooks and crannies to rethink the counters situation when I get new minions and various others. The only element I'm really worried about are the Hero and Villain cards...but I have some ideas on how to rearrange things when I get the expansions and might run out of room.



And since I used the wooden art case, instead of the original boxes, I thought I could add a little more theme to it and woodburned the logo on to the front. I'd never woodburned anything before and was a bit nervous about ruining it at some point and having to scrap the whole project, but it went smoothly enough and I'm really happy with it.



In fact, I was so pleased, I started envisioning putting together other boxes like this with similar woodburned logos. An Arkham Horror box, or two, would be cool as would Last Night on Earth.

Damn, looks really nice and the woodburned logo on the front really finishes it off.
good work man!!!

[phantomninja]

That is a really nice piece! Was it freehand or did you use a stencil of some sort? Oh and welcome to the boards.

[Emp]

Nice work!

[samuraitrev]

Greetings JRLSy that's a damn cool case how about posting a guide so we can make some too?

[JRSly]

Thanks everyone! I had a fun game last night against the Werewolf, I was catching some lucky breaks and everything was looking pretty good going into the Showdown...until Victor Danforth tossed his keg of gunpowder into the fray and managed to come up with NO hits and was KO'd in the same round. All downhill from there....

(05-14-2012 05:48 PM)phantomninja Wrote:  That is a really nice piece! Was it freehand or did you use a stencil of some sort? Oh and welcome to the boards.

First I scanned the logo from the instruction book and cleaned it up a bit and made it solid black, printed it out as large as letter size paper would allow. Taped it in place on the box. And then to transfer it, I covered the back of the piece of paper with charcoal and then traced the logo with a ball point pen, do-it-yourself carbon paper. And then I traced the transferred logo with the woodburner. Not too tough, just a bit tedious.

samuraitrev Wrote:Greetings JRLSy that's a damn cool case how about posting a guide so we can make some too?

Sure thing! First, the Plano boxes I used...the larger one that contains most commonly used counters-Wounds, Investigation; is a model 3449. And the three smaller ones for Villains/Minions and the remaining counters-Resolve, Skill Modifiers, NPC counters; are model 3448. I got all of them at Wal-Mart so they should be easy for most people to find. The 3448's are eerily perfect for fitting in the Hobby Lobby case as it is designed. And the smallest containers are from Hobby Lobby, they're Darice Bead Containers and they come in packs of three. I used them to hold all the pieces associations with the Bog Fiend(minions/Swamps) and Unspeakable Horror(minions/Voids).

And the case, again, is from Hobby Lobby. They really are nice for board game storage, they're cheap, lightweight, roomy, and easily modified. They're around $20, but Hobby Lobby's website has a free coupon you can get every day of the week that's good for 40% off one item so it's a steal for $12+tax.

The top tray with all the counters and dice and a couple decks of cards comes with the case, and with most of the dividers you see. The only additions I made, you can probably see the lighter colored wood, were the two walls for holding the Mystery and Event decks. I made those walls from 1/4" basswood that was cut to the height of all the other walls on the tray. Basswood is a step above balsa, you can get it at Hobby Lobby as well. It's light weight and easy to cut but plenty strong for our purposes here. I cut them to size and glued them in place with wood glue. I can get measurements if anyone wants them, but really I just eyeballed everything in relation to the components I was working with. So I just left enough space around the decks should I ever decide to sleeve them in the future.

Now onto the bottom of the case. From the store, it comes with two slats of thin wood(you can see the grooves for these slats on the sides) but they won't really help out in any way, so I got rid of them. Then again, with basswood(I used 1/4" for the piece between character cards and playing boards and 3/16" everywhere else) and using the character cards, decks, and playing boards for guides, I cut them to size and glued them in place. I did measure the height of these divider walls real quick...it's 1 3/16". This is important because it's high enough to fit one more playing board, but short enough so the upper tray still fits well and the case closes fine. It would've been nice to make these walls a little taller and be assured everything in the future would fit, but then everything else would've been thrown out of whack.

The decks as currently arranged are - Manor/Windmill, Abandoned Keep/The Olde Woods, Monastery/Forbidden Island/The Inn, Town Items/Monastery Items/Town Elders/Possessed/Curse of Werewolf etc., and Secrets/Lair. Still about 50% room on top of each deck so I think everything from the Coast should fit, or like I said earlier I've got some ideas on shuffling things around should the need arise. The only other step was adding in strips of ribbon to the bottom of each card compartment so I could lift them out of the box. I thought this looked a bit snazzier and it was much easier then trying to make finger notches to get at the cards.

I've rambled on quite a bit, heh...if anyone would like any more specifics or if anything isn't clear, let me know. I'm happy to help anyone else who'd want to make their own case.

[MoonSylver]

Thanks for the info on HOW you did it. I'd admired the pic's you posted on BGG already, but now that I understand the process you used I would have the nerve to attempt it myself!

Once I get done pimping FanG I intend on starting on ATOE next & I think I might have to make this part of the process.
---MS

[vikinglad]

Welcome to the site. And of course, awesome case! Can;t believe that was your first time wood-burning. It looks professional to me.

[JRSly]

(05-14-2012 09:56 PM)MoonSylver Wrote:  Thanks for the info on HOW you did it. I'd admired the pic's you posted on BGG already, but now that I understand the process you used I would have the nerve to attempt it myself!

Once I get done pimping FanG I intend on starting on ATOE next & I think I might have to make this part of the process.
---MS

Heh, sorry if I misunderstood your comment over there and gave you the impression I was just looking at the logo and woodburning without any other help. Now THAT would be impressive.

[MoonSylver]

(05-14-2012 11:52 PM)JRSly Wrote:  

(05-14-2012 09:56 PM)MoonSylver Wrote:  Thanks for the info on HOW you did it. I'd admired the pic's you posted on BGG already, but now that I understand the process you used I would have the nerve to attempt it myself!

Once I get done pimping FanG I intend on starting on ATOE next & I think I might have to make this part of the process.
---MS

Heh, sorry if I misunderstood your comment over there and gave you the impression I was just looking at the logo and woodburning without any other help. Now THAT would be impressive.

:laugh:

No worries. When you explained it I had a real *duh* moment. Another thought I had for those type boxes is to print off a copy of the cover & decoupage it on. I've never done that before, but I've read a little bit about it & think it would yield an good result. But in this case, wood burned would definitely be better. Gives it more of a folksy rustic look, befitting the theme.
---MS