Have you ever played a trading card or a living card game like Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh!?
Then you know about the struggle to both effectively and nicely store your decks. Sure, there are deck boxes for all kinds of use cases. But are your specific needs met by those? Lets just 3d print our own boxes then!
So the first thing I thought of was a deck box that could fit enough cards for the classic MTG format, a life counter die and some additional dice counters, for different use cases. But 60 cards actually is not equal 60 cards. There is protective sleeves that have to be calculated in when you design the height of the deck box. Also you will want to know which deck it is, even with the lid closed. So I went for a cutout that shows you the top card – should be enough to identify the deck.
But wait! There is another popular MTG format out there: Commander. This one is played with 100 cards. So lets design another deck box:
Taller than the other one. Done? Nope! Nowadays many tokens come in the form of token cards. So you have to add some height for the additional token cards. Lets make it.. 115 cards then. And oh, lets resize the dice tray now and make it wider so you still can access the dice with your fingers easily despite the fact that you have to reach in deeper into the box now.
And after all this you come to realize that there is different kinds of sleeves. And that some people even double sleeve. And with 115 cards in mind, double sleeving adds a lot of height to the deck.
Adapting to the new height would mean a box that is around ~8.5 centimetres tall. So you have to really reach inside the dice tray with your fingers to get your dice. There is a solution: Go back to editing again and put in a new level that elevates the dice closer to the top.
Done? Nope. Have you ever heard of hives? If no: Me neither. 😉
Hives are bigger boxes from companies like Ultimate Guard that are supposed to keep several deck boxes inside. So if you want to carry all your 3d printed deck boxes with you, they will only fit if you keep them at a maximum width.. back to editing again. 😀
I guess the experience to take from this is that every deck box need is widely different and the best solution is a individual one. Or is it..? 😉
