Me and @Alex_Wheatley got the boardgame Quacks of Quedlinburg, a game about brewing snake oil potions and selling them. It’s a press your luck game where you draw tokens from a bag, and keep drawing for as long as you are willing to risk it. If you draw too many white tokens, your pot explodes and you lose out on some of the rewards. The coloured tokens have various useful effects that get applied when you draw them.
We also have the two expansions for it, herb witches and alchemists. I wanted to make a custom box insert for it, as the original is just a folded sheet of printed card. I also wanted to get all the pieces for both expansions to fit into the same box as the base game, so the whole thing can be carried together. Plus i wanted it to look nice and fit a theme
So I jumped into CAD and started designing a box and containers to be laser cut.
Design
Crate design
I made a facade layer and engraved some “planks” into it to make these ingredient boxes look like wooden crates. I also used screenshots of the pdf manual for the game to create icons of each ingredient (I played around with several different traced layers to get the right highlights and shapes emphasised in each icon that I wanted)
The lids slide open. The top facade layer also acts as a slider to keep the lid on.
Different ingredient qualities are separated by dividers.
Ignore the pumpkins box, which I put upside down…
Treasure chest for rubies
This treasure chest contains rubies, as well as a die and some other miscellaneous tokens.
The curved lid was fun to design. It also has a lip inside the lid which slides inside to keep it closed.
Card box
Cards are stored in this box with a lid to protect them from the larger components which could move around inside the box during transport. There is a divider to keep different types of cards separated
Large containers for tiles
These contain the tiles for recipes, witches and alchemy patients. It was quite tricky to find space in the box for these to fit.
Main box frame
This frame keeps all the other boxes in place, provides a place to store the player bags, and provides a bit of protection and rigidity to the outer box from the game itself. (it also gives me a little corner to put my initials on
)
The original iteration of this design didn’t include the cut out section on the top right, meaning some of the game pieces ended up being too tall to fit into the box. This version removes 3mm from the height in those areas, plus it provides a place for the other containers to slot into, so it is clear what parts fit where.
Icons
Ingredients:
Recipes (I shamelessly stole this icon from a book icon I found online):
The rest of the icons I designed myself.
Fortune teller + Essence cards:
Rubies, dice, flame + misc.
Witches + Patients
Use
Packing it all away
Recipe books, witches and patients stack into these boxes and slot into the frame.
overflow bowls + player backs go into their dedicated section, ruby chest + card box goes next to the recipes +witches/patients, then the essence trackers go on top of this section, with the curved section leaving space for the card box.
Cauldrons + score tracker + instructions all go on top, relatively flush with the lid.
And the lid fits on top without bulging.
I’m thinking of offering to make custom boardgame inserts for other people too, I’m thinking in return I will ask that:
I get to borrow their game for a bit while I take measurements, but also play a game I haven’t played before
plus They pay for materials + a beer I can drink while I design it 