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Aeon Trespass: Odyssey - Box Organizer by Fancy But Functional: A Pictorial Review
🕑 Added 2023-03-31 09:00:03 +0000 UTCDisclaimer: I reached out to Fancy But Functional about their products with intention to purchase and review this insert. Gyuri and his business partner then sent me this insert, plus inserts for Darkest Dungeon. They did not require this review in exchange, nor did they pay or sponsor me in any way outside of sending the inserts at no cost to me.
You can order inserts for a wide range of games at https://fancybutfunctional.com/I already own their Middara one and it transformed the experience when playing. This positive experience was why I sought out Fancy But Functional for my Aeon Trespass insert when it arrived broken and I also discovered it could not hold sleeved cards and the deluxe tiles despite having sufficient volume to do so.
When my Aeon Trespass: Odyssey (ATO) arrived back at the start of the year , the first thing I noticed was the insert had been cracked and shattered. The outside box showed no signs of shipping damage, so this must have occurred during the factory packing process and was not caught by quality assurance. In itself this was not enough to make me reach out to Into the Unknown Studios for a replacement because I am very much against more unnecessary plastic being in the world if I can avoid it. I prefer cardboard and wood inserts over plastic and foamcore ones wherever possible.
That written; an intelligent use of plastic to create a well designed insert that will last the lifetime of the board game (which, lets face it, is going to be longer than the lifetime of the owners these days) is something I am fine with. Games like Unsettled and My Father's Work have incredible designs for their inserts and one can appreciate those. However, as a part of playing ATO I wanted to see what the game was like if you packed it away again and left it for a few weeks. This is the point where I started to see the limitations of the official insert – it could not hold sleeved cards, deluxe tiles or even the terrain tiles and tokens without a lot of mess and compromising.
As such, when it came to put my second play through of the First Cycle on the table again I found that without all the photographs I took (just in case) I would never have been able to rebuild it. While I am in the fortunate position where I have a table that I can keep the entire game; map and battlemat, out at once I felt I needed to see a snapshot of what the experience would be like for players who were not that fortunate. It was not a good experience for me, taking nearly an hour to get everything back out, organised and all the tokens loaded into my GameTrayz trays. It was at this point I decided to pull the trigger and find out what third party options were available; Fancy But Functional was one of the top of my lists to check alongside LaserOx and TowerRex due to their European location and use of wood based inserts which I had purchased in the past. Behind that wasFeldherr and Folded Space; who I will use if I have to but most of the time I prefer to avoid it.
The insert arrived in a series of baggies (Pamcha the Dog pictured but not included, she's a part of a package deal that includes me) with each boxes components held together with elastic bands. Those elastic bands were something I found very useful during the assembly of the insert, but more on that later. The instructions to assemble the insert were not included in the box because they are on the website; saving on printing costs just a little (it all adds up).
Those instructions cover two forms that the insert can take; the first is Gyuri's preferred usage, involving space for a binder to hold the various cards; and the second is the one I went for, which has the cards held in boxes grouped by category.
All I required for the assembly was:
- Instructions
- Wood Glue
- A Craft Mat
- Rubber Bands
Assembly itself took a few hours (including time to let the glue dry), which passed well enough as the process was clear and even the complicated parts involving the miniature storage (more on that later) were understandable. In fact I am always blown away by how smart and well designed these kind of third party inserts are. I've built a couple of simple inserts myself for older games like Warhammer Quest; but these wooden ones are always an absolute marvel of engineering – and the miniatures insert is just mind bogglingly innovative. Also the rubber bands were a wonderful assistance when leaving the components to dry as they acted like clamps, keeping the joints tight until the glue was dry.
That's enough on the construction process for now; lets take a look at how the insert works in the box and on the table!
To start with, here's the box with the lid on, you can see there is no lift at all which is always good to see because while I can live with lift, it does mean that the box looks a bit less attractive on the shelf and it a takes less space vertically. When you're dealing with a box as large as ATO's every little bit of space matters.
Here's the lid off, confirming that there's no lift. The books sit on top with sufficient room for them and any extra pages you are using to track your current cycle, here's what it the insert look like inside the box. There are two spaces you'll see here, which I was a concern. However, I've discussed these gaps with Gyrui and he's confirmed that he will be constructing boxes to fill those spaces, providing more storage for tokens and cards which will help organisation further.
This is the top layer of boxes removed so you can see the second layer's organisation. It's all fully packed down here with no wasted space. You can see FBF's innovative padding on the miniatures side in the second picture, excuse the paint jobs on the miniatures. All I have time for at the moment is contrast paint minis.
Next up is the Clue/Exploration card tray. I want more dividers for boxes like this so I can properly split apart each Cycle's cards and keep them highly organised. Again Gyrui agreed with me on this and there will be additional dividers going ahead.
The Conditions, Argonauts, Patterns, Mnemnos, Fated Mnemnos, Trauma, Kratos and Moiros cards all fit within these two trays, I keep them on the board by the battlemat and use them. Unfortunately there is no room for a divider between the Mnemnos/Kratos and Moiros/Fated Mnemnos decks and this means you'll either need to add your own card divider or accept that sometimes you'll see the bottom side of the Kratos/Moiros decks. This is a constraint of the design and there's just no room inside to find the 4-5 mm required. This means that this is the one sole concern I had that can't be addressed, but it is not a huge deal.
Our next boxes are for the Technologies, the Secret Cards and the cycle cards. I have no real comments to make here except that they all do the job exactly as advertised and it's also great that each cycle's cards and technologies is kept separate.
The terrain is all held in this box, it has a bunch of spaces and elevators that allow for the tiles to be held, easily accessed and kept flat. You will have to remove terrain tiles when playing because some of them are covered, but I find this to be acceptable. The Labyrinth tiles in particular all need to be taken out when fighting certain Primordials so that's not a huge deal for me.
Primordial, Titan and Story cards all go in here with the Triskellions and the H envelope. It's an empty envelope for me at this stage, but I wanted to show it fits here.
Dice go in here.
These four are the token trays, they sit like this in the box and on the table they look like this:
I've found these trays to be super useful, I've been able to keep the exploration related tokens in one tray and all the rest in others. I think perhaps the tray with the various break/opening tokens could have been subdivided further to separate out the various types, I simply keep the ones my Titans generate in one section and the rest in the other and that works fine for me.
Here is the big one, these are the Deluxe cycle tiles, I find the tiles so much easier to use than the card version and if you don't have the tiles you'll have a lot of spare space here even if you sleeve the cards.
This is how they fit in the box, when storing I keep explored tiles facing one way and unexplored ones facing the other. I also supplement this with a photograph, but that is because of the odd numbering layout used on the tiles.
These are the individual Primordial boxes, all cards are sleeved in Gamegenic sleeves and they sit comfortably with a solid, but not too tight fit. I simply keep the relevant Primordials out on the table and the rest back inside the box. These boxes have made it super simple to rotate Primordials and keep everything organised when they're not in battle. They may get a lid the same as the FBF KDM monster boxes in the future.
Our pal the Hekaton here demonstrates all the components needed on the table while it is cooling its hands and not sumo punching Titans around the place. They have a very small table footprint.
Now it's time for the most exciting and innovative part! The miniature trays. The bottom layer all sit direct on the box bottom, so they are not removed en mass (plus there is no need to do so, just pick out the Primordials you need).
This is the first of the two trays this one sits on the left (in the pictures) and it has pillars plus slots to keep it clear from the large minis below. I've also provided a picture showing that the minis do not go above the top of the tray, as such they are completely protected.
This is the second tray, it fits on the right and has pillars + slots to again keep it lifted clear of the miniatures below it. I've also provided the image showing the clearance the tray has.
The white you see is the foam padding, this gently holds the miniatures and keeps them protected from some nudging. There will eventually be some wear on the paint in a few spots if you are constantly taking out and putting back the miniatures; however any person who owns a game with painted miniatures should as a matter of course re-varnish their miniatures every once in a while because even just handling them with your hands will rub the protective coating off.
Here are the two currently empty spaces which Gyuri has confirmed will be filled with boxes to provide extra organisation and saving spaces. You can also see the tray I use to hold the generic “*” tokens which I didn't photograph separately.
Last of all here are some images of it set up on the table. I've covered the Cycle I spoiler related areas like tiles, gear and similar.
Overall I cannot stress how happy with this insert; it has made set up and tear down far easier, while also keeping the table more organised and protecting everything. I can recommend Fancy But Functional's ATO Insert without any hesitation. I can also recommend their Darkest Dungeon insert and Middara Insert; those have both had a huge impact on improving my play and storage experience with the associated games. I really do consider FBF to be one of the top third party insert providers and this insert has improved my experience with it a great deal.
I have also found communication with Gyuri to be a pleasant experience as he is open to feedback and constantly striving to improve his inserts to make them as efficient and easy to use as possible. I find myself wanting to try out their Kingdom Death insert as a consequence of this due to my LaserOx one has reached maximum capacity for sleeved gear cards. I am also eyeing up their Arkham Horror LCG big box now because that collection has started to be very sprawling.
You can find additional photography of the insert, including the binder variant over on Fancy But Functional's website here: https://fancybutfunctional.com/products/aeon-trespass-odessy-premium-box-organizer
Comments
Dave Sintec
I have their KDM and Gloomhaven player boards - both are excellent. This organiser looks sweet but funds are tight right now so it'll have to wait.
Paul dewar
I did have that insert as well just did not do the job for me. Mines is all stained black I even painted the names in white
