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LaserOx: KDM Gambler's Chest Organizer Review
🕑 Added 2024-06-21 09:00:08 +0000 UTC
LaserOx sample photo of the insert from their site. See link at bottom of this review for more images from them.
This review is not sponsored in any way or form. I purchased this direct from LaserOx and received no special treatment/review copy or similar.
Just over 4 years ago in May of 2020 I reviewed the LaserOx Lantern's Legend Core Game insert for Kingdom Death. An insert that, apart from the dice tower, has performed beyond expectations and is still the insert I use when playing. Over this time, that insert gradually filled up to the point where I reached space issues for the gear cards in particular and I needed to expand my storage solutions for the made from trees portion of Kingdom Death. As such, I was very excited to learn that LaserOx were designing an insert for the Gambler's Chest Expansion box. It took a while to budget to order it, but it arrived last week and I assembled it over one afternoon.
We'll begin with a look at how storage was looking before I got this insert. I sleeve my cards mostly in GameGenic Matt sleeves as I find the low glare finish to be legible and pleasing to both the eye and touch.
There are a few issues with this storage; first of all pulling out the Philosophy books is awkward without placing a ribbon behind the bottom one to allow for pulling them all out at once. Secondly the knowledge card slots are too narrow once sleeves are included.
Also, while I love the way that the official insert has designed the large tiles to sit under the settlement box, the opportunity card storage is a terrible waste of space that doesn't work at all once sleeves are included.
I have had to not use that slot because the fit here is so tight that the sleeves would get bent and warped. In all, the official insert was fine and a great improvement over the base game one, but I have wanted to replace it for a while due to how much easier the LaserOx base game insert makes set up.
The settlement insert on the other hand has been performing fine, it has very little wasted space, though I do think the knowledge portion was a little too large. Here's how it is with one of my saved campaigns placed inside (currently I've halted playing until the Frogdog and plastic board arrives and I'll start a fresh campaign when that finally happens).
That's where things were before the insert arrived. Let us take a look at it shall we?
The ten sheets came shrink wrapped along with instructions. You can see that some of the sheets have engraving on them, either to identify what goes in a given tray or more often to make the outsides of the individual trays look pretty when they are pulled out onto the board. I imagine that this set would look really striking if stained black and the engravings are filled in with white, silver or gold. However, I've not felt the need to do that myself as I find the natural look very pleasing.
The additional tools you'll find beneficial when assembling a wood insert like this one are:
Wood Glue – essential, this insert requires gluing
Craft mat or other surface to work on
Sharp craft knife – to remove the pieces from the insert cleanly by cutting the remaining wood tags
Clamps – optional, but great to hold corners together while the glue sets, most corners on this insert do not need clamping, the fit is tight
A rubber headed mallet – the fit is so tight on some of these that they required gentle hammering to get them fully flush
Fine sandpaper, to smooth off any rough remains of tags
The instructions are very clear and well labelled, so as long as you remain organised and remove only the pieces required for each tray it is very difficult to get lost. Though I absolutely recommend dry test fitting before you glue as there is the odd piece you may get mixed up between inside and outside panel walls. However, this is good practice whenever working in crafts and trade; measure twice, cut once and all that. Also, while this is wood, it is still plywood and as such one should treat it somewhat gently due to the relative thin nature of the sheets.
The first tray we'll look at is the one which I think has most improved from the original design. That is the terrain tray. In the Lantern's Legend box this tray is simply a large box to put all the tiles in loose. That has been revised here with a tray that has specific slots for each different terrain. Here it is in the three stages that you put the tiles in.
On the left is the bottom tray, and I left one of the trays empty so you can see how LaserOx have engraved the bottom to identify what goes in which space. The second and third images demonstrate the cut slots for the Smog and on top of that the two largest tiles. I really like this update to the design ethos, it protects the various tiles better by stopping them sliding around as much while also making them super organised when on the table.
Next we have the normal cards, these trays are improved versions of the original designs used in the 2020 design, they use less material (from the bottoms) and are thereby lighter and easier to move around.
I haven't fully planned out what I am now going to keep in each separate tray, but I believe I may use the small one on the right for the common showdown cards (terrain, fighting arts, disorders, universals etc) and the one on the left I will keep all the various settlement style cards. This lets the monsters all sit in the core box trays. I'm still mulling it all over and I'll likely make a decision once the Frogdog arrives (still no shipping notice for me here).
This is the gear card tray, the issue where the dividers are taller than the tray is not a fault of the tray design. Instead it is caused by the original 1st generation KDM dividers being much taller than the 2nd generation ones (you can see some 2nd gen ones at the front and they fit fine). I hope that this will be resolved when Campaigns of Death (CoD) arrives and we get replacement dividers, but I am also not holding my breath on that one. Team Death are a bit erratic with their Divider discipline; it took ages to get a tactics divider and we didn't get one for Wanderer knowledges in the GCE. If I don't get replacement dividers to match the new design in CoD then I am going to cut down the 1st generation ones to fit, but for now I am trying to avoid that situation.
Because I sleeve, I am not using the pictured wooden dividers from LaserOx, there simply isn't the room when I have so many cards to organise.
Encounter cards go in this tray here; at the moment you can see it looks very empty, but this could easily be reorganised to hold three sets of encounter cards for three different monster groups. At the moment however I will use this tray to keep the three different types of decks for the Bone Eaters organised when on the table.
The Booklet Tray is the element of the box I like the most, it now has two trays with space for easy removal and even allows me to keep the [TOP SECRET] dice, the Razor Sharp and those black dice which need to be kept separate for absolutely no specific reason. There's also plenty of room for more philosophy booklets here and it's turned out to be a great spot to keep the 10th White Speaker book and Ringtail Bookmark safe also.
Finally we get to the tray that I am least sure about, that is the replacement tray for the settlement box. We'll look at it so I can explain why I'm not as thrilled about this piece.
In the box it looks like this:
As you can see here, this tray has a section for putting four miniatures into it. That's a neat idea, for people who need it, but for those of use who either do not move our miniatures to different places for play, or have alternative transportation options, this space is not well utilised.
On top of that, while we have space in the tray for the Gear and Knowledge cards. The width of that right section is specifically for Knowledge cards, so there isn't anywhere that a settlement's bridge (American) size cards such as the Innovation deck to go without sliding from side to side.
So, I am using this tray for the moment, I am also considering returning to the original insert for this specific box. It just isn't fit for my needs and I wish I had an alternative option that replaced the miniature space with more card storage for the innovation deck and similar sized cards.
Also, before we move on, this box should have five miniatures not four, the GCE has the scout to consider, and as such I can't help but feel that LaserOx didn't find out all the details before building this settlement insert.
Last of all, let us look how everything fits in the box, because there's another issue there.
This is the first layer, everything is fine here with the only issue being caused by the tall dividers which is not a LaserOx issue. That's simply the generational changes APG decided upon.
With all the trays in it looks like this, there is still good room for knowledge cards and I have space in the core box for another two or three monsters also.
The rulebook sits like so:
It is a great fit that I am very happy with. However the encounter board was not so smooth. The insert seems to not be designed to fit that board in properly as the lifts on the knowledge trays are too high. It creates this situation.
I tried a bunch of different ways to see if I was getting this wrong, but no orientation or position I tried could create the right fit. So I was forced to manually cut the areas that were too tall and create my own inset. Not ideal and not to the standard that I have come to expect from LaserOx. I am overall pleased with the fit once I trimmed things and now the lid sits flush with everything held inside.
Final Thoughts
While an improvement over the original insert design in how this one organises everything, uses less wood so it is lighter and maximises its utilisation of space inside the box, I cannot overlook the encounter board and settlement box issues, both of which are larger missteps than the dice tower that didn't smoothly fit D10s in the original base game box. If you want to transport miniatures around inside the box I guess it works, but the lack of a slot for the Scout miniature is a head scratcher there. There certainly should have been options to select from here.
This means that while I will use this insert for many years to come; I am not entirely doing that because of how good the insert is. Instead I'm keeping it in part because I don't want to waste resources by throwing away a second serviceable insert.
So, I can only recommend this one with reservations, the encounter board and settlement box really do need to be looked at and redesigned, with the settlement box getting two versions, one that holds five miniatures and the other that has more space for cards, especially the non-knowledge ones. It is an improvement over the official insert for my purposes, but not as large of an upgrade as the core game one was. The core game one has transformed the box into something that holds so much content really well, this one is better than the official one for sure, but isn't as good as it could have been with a few adjustments.
You can purchase the insert at: https://laserox.net/kdm-gamblers-organizer?search=kingdom%20death&description=true
The original Lantern's Light insert is here at: https://laserox.net/kdm?search=kingdom%20death&description=true
