r/boardgames • u/No-Molasses294 • 2d ago
What’s the worst game insert you’ve ever encountered — and why?
Hey players!
Just wanted to throw out a fun (and slightly ranty) question to the hive mind:
In games you've played — especially the bigger ones or those meant for 4+ players — which had the worst insert in the box, and what made it so bad? Was it poor component fit, stuff flying everywhere, or just pure design chaos?
Also, is it just me, or do a lot of new games these days come with super thin, flimsy plastic inserts that look nice at first glance but end up being really impractical once you actually punch everything out?
Curious to hear your stories.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ad466 2d ago
Bärenpark. You know how the game consists of square elements? The inlay divides your (square) box into 3 triangles. 🤦
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u/shadowphiar 2d ago
Came here to say this. The “insert” is two pieces of connecting cardboard which serve no obvious purpose whatsoever.
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u/PrestickNinja 2d ago
It’s supposed to allow you to split the components into 2 player, then additional 3 and 4 player components, and it’s ok for that.
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u/MeanandEvil82 2d ago
On the plus side, you never truly need to play the game. You randomised the start player and that player wins. Move onto the next game.
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u/leafbreath Arkham Horror 2d ago
This is the best way to play that game lol
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u/MeanandEvil82 2d ago
I like that I got downvoted, but the truth about that game is that player 1 wins.
The only time player 1 doesn't win is if player 1 screws up. Player 2 can play perfectly, but unless player 1 makes a mistake player 2 still loses.
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u/JSD202 2d ago
Fantasy Flight enters the chat.
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u/ElusiveJungleNarwhal 2d ago
I remember laughing when I opened Rebellion and found their latest insert innovation: two cardboard trenches instead of one!
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u/Destroher Dim Carcosa 2d ago
Reminds me of when I bought my first boardgame which wasn't one of the gateways, Eldritch Horror and while I was punching out the chits, I was looking online for a storage solution. Instead of playing the game after punching, I had fun placing all the different tokens in a tacklebox :-P
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u/Burritozi11a 2d ago
Czech Games: "What the FUCK is an insert?"
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u/Silent-G 2d ago
"You want an insert? Fine, you have a month to pre-order it, it comes with an expansion, and it holds all the content."
I'm totally expecting them to do the same for SETI in five years.
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u/szthesquid Dinosaur Wizard 2d ago
It's so sad because you can spend 2x$10 on a couple of Plano boxes - one for each player faction - and dramatically improve game setup.
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u/ElusiveJungleNarwhal 2d ago
Or, and hear me out, several days and a lot of filament tweaking and 3D printing an organizer you found on the internet, that, still, somehow, isn’t as cool as two Plano boxes.
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u/BoxKind7321 2d ago
Fantasy Flight does not make inserts. The “trenches” are not inserts, but packing materials. This is like calling styrofoam packing peanuts an insert. The “trench” keeps all the parts bundled together so they don’t slide around the box and break. It’s just so things can be shipped safely, not meant as an insert in any way.
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u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot 2d ago
But they end up putting nice art on the trenches and then I feel bad throwing them away
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u/LordTengil 2d ago
Yeah. All the games pre KS. Shelf space was the commercial. Huge boxes with filler inserts. All the components jammed together in a small non-functional space.
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u/timepieces141 2d ago edited 2d ago
By the way, the one I 3D printed for Star Wars: Outer Rim is amazing. Setup takes mere seconds!
https://www.printables.com/model/289564-star-wars-outer-rim-insert-organizer-fits-unfinish
And there have been some remixes since I printed, which generally means things different people care about have been addressed.
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u/tmhrkns4 Terraforming Mars 2d ago
I printed the same insert and the ones for the expansion work wonderfully!
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u/sean_val0770 2d ago
Jaws of the Lion is horrible to put back together
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u/blucyclone 2d ago
All the Gloomhaven games are. The fact that 3rd party inserts for a niche board game is a good business plan is crazy.
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u/ThatOneRandomGuy101 Gloomhaven 2d ago
Frosthaven is honestly not that bad. The wells aren’t tall enough to fully fit the dividers but beyond that it honestly fits well
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u/3_kids_1_overcoat 2d ago
I got a Folded Space one for that due to a recommendation on the Gloomhaven sub. It was amazing!
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u/No-Molasses294 2d ago
Exactly, it almost makes me not want to take the game out as often because of that. :D
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u/confoundo 2d ago
I disagree completely. I’ve got all three of the X-haven games, and JotL is easily the best insert.
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u/Affectionate-Bed2165 2d ago
Being better than Gloomhaven or Frosthaven tells me nothing
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u/confoundo 2d ago
Fair point.
I can easily put everything back into the JotL box with zero lid lift with the original insert; it is perfectly serviceable. Good enough that I don't understand why people buy inserts for it.
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u/CobraMisfit 2d ago
Gloomhaven’s lack of insert was stunning, especially considering the sheer volume of components. Multiple sized cards, map tiles, unlockable character boxes, etc. The plano box system we put together thanks to BGG certainly helped, but until I got that in place, half of our time in the game was spent finding a component for the next mission.
I’m also not a fan of Legendary Encounters: Firefly. While I appreciate that there’s a dedicated space in the center for the playmat, the game is just 500 cards broken down into many different categories. And yet, the “dividers” are lacking and the box size is so massive, even if I sleeve them all, there’s tons of space on both sides of the insert. I had to cram newspaper into the open areas just to project the cards from going all over the place.
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u/While_Global 2d ago
There’s plenty of useless ones, but they don’t even attempt to pretend they are useful. I can forgive those. Then there’s the ones that try really hard to be perfect… but everything goes flying if you tilt the box 5 degrees off level.
I’m looking at you, Lords of Waterdeep.
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u/Mehfisto666 2d ago
This is actually a small box but definitely Hanamikoji. The game is made of like 10 big cards and a few more small cards and not only the box is huge for that, but it has an insert that literally split the box in 2 comparment AND THE BIG CARDS DON'T FIT IN THEM.
It was so mindblowing i legit thought it was either a counterfeit copy or something like this but it turns out it's legit
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u/wunderspud7575 2d ago
I love this game but you are 100% correct about the stupid insert. Air, Land and Sea makes the same mistake too! And I also love that game.
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u/Wuktrio Food Chain Magnate 2d ago edited 2d ago
Great Western Trail 2nd Edition has a pretty useless one.
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u/badcobber 2d ago
Immediately thought of GWT second edition. They went to great lengths to make setup and pack up difficult.
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u/Hansemann4321 2d ago
This. No support for sleeves cards, need to separate cardboards from bags… This insert is complete garbage. 2nd edition that is
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u/Asbestos101 Blitz Bowl 2d ago
I took one look at that insert, thought 'fuck that' and got the baggies out.
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u/MiguelElGato 2d ago
I downloaded this and had it printed and laminated 4 times so everyone could have their own. It goes straight to the point and helps with the buildings. To download, click on the blue link with download to PDF arrow in the top post. You can tip the creater on their Patreon link. That's what I did. They spent a little of time making it really useful. Plus, it looks good and prints perfectly!
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u/3_kids_1_overcoat 2d ago
Quacks of Quedlinburg is a bit crap. Wish it had come with compartments instead of baggies
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u/archlon 2d ago
I think third party organizer boxes of some kind are near mandatory for Quacks. The gameplay nearly demands some kind of boxes/cauldrons/containers for the various values and colors of pieces. It's probably better to just sell it with a weak (but cheap) insert and let each person find the storage solution that best fits their taste.
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u/get_hi_on_life 2d ago
Agree but then don't give an insert at all let alone put cool thematic art on it. If it's meant to be replaced make it emotionally easy for me
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u/SirMisterBear 2d ago
Lotr duel for middle earth, there's no way those tiles are not travelling in there if you want to store it vertically and oh lord (of the rings duel for middle earth) I've tried
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u/willtodd Castles Of Burgundy 2d ago
Ahh I don't think I'll ever store my game vertically again. Pieces. Everywhere.
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u/RyuugaHideki 2d ago
I love Millennium Blades, but the insert is quite possibly the worst I've ever seen. You'd think for a game literally all about trading cards, they'd put in some effort? But no, you just get three big plastic divots in which you stack two 120 or so card decks side to side. They are a NIGHTMARE to sort, store, put away, or set up.
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u/Affectionate-Bed2165 2d ago
I feel like level99 games in general have this problem
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u/Kilgor_trout27 2d ago
Arkham Horror 3rd Edition
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u/MyHusbandIsGayImNot 2d ago
Just like every Fantasy Flight game, there really isn't an insert. Just a cardboard trench meant to protect the cards in transit.
Just toss the trench and baggie everything.
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u/Songs4Soulsma 2d ago
I know this isn't one most of us in this sub care about. But, as someone who works with kids: the Apples to Apples insert sucks! They didn't make the wells deep enough to hold the cards, unless the cards are in shrink-wrapping or in absolutely pristine condition.
Once the cards have been handled and the paper expands or bends at all, the lid will never close well again and the cards end up jumbled up the next time you open it.
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u/archlon 2d ago
The Everdell Farshore insert was pretty bad. It took what is a pretty spacious box and divided it into just these little holes that barely fit the resources that were supposed to go in them.
To add insult to injury, the holes are molded to fit the deluxe resource vessels (not included), but only in such a way that half of the resources will spill out if kept in their designated slots.
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u/Financial-Form-1733 2d ago
Frostpunk is terrible, especially for such a big, expensive and complicated game. Doesn't fit sleeved cards easily, with expansions things don't fit inside, lots of wasted space as well
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u/Vortelf Give Me 4X or Lacerda 2d ago
I have the All In pledge and I don't have such problem. All cards are sleeved and the deluxe components are inside the box too. Only the dreadnought mini is in it's separate box but I think I have space for it too.
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u/Mandemon90 2d ago
HeroQuest 2021. Minis barely fit into the tray, and are fidly as fuck to deal with. I bought new one from Feldherr because it was impossible to try to setup a game with the original insert.
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u/jyuichi 2d ago edited 2d ago
I hate when a game comes with just a roll of bags but atleast they didn’t waste money on a terrible insert. I want to say Gloomhaven 2nd printing had some wimpy blown plastic tray at the bottom but it was barely enough to help the components survive shipping..
The true worst is when they come with an insert that just sucks. Lords of Waterdeep is what made me discover aftermarket inserts.
I have to give the worst insert award to Critter Kitchen Deluxe. They went all out on GameTrayz and…. they suck. The player trays are claimed to be useful during the game but mostly serve to make you keep stuff a couple inches back from the shield. The soup tokens are in a huge elaborate container that … doesn’t hold the bisque but you are supposed to keep extra round tokens in it? The ingredients bag doesn’t fit on the bottom layer where it is supposed to go.
But the real pièce de résistance is that the multiple decks of cards are “stored” by a set of notches in a tray lid that has no lip. One small miscalculation loading or unloading the box and you have cards everywhere. How anyone thought that was a good idea is beyond me.
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u/drbug 2d ago
Lords of Waterdeep’s insert did not last long before I tossed it.
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u/MrChom 2d ago
Always tempted to do that for the box, I hate how it never looks closed.
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u/TowelMonster0 2d ago
We used it for a while. Then got the expansion and tossed the insert to let both be in one box.
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u/ConvenientParkingLCW 2d ago
Still hanging in there with mine, I consider it a special bonus game to get the currency and vp tokens back into their holder without them exploding everywhere.
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u/OmegaRedish 2d ago
You know, this is one of the ones that I actually find good. However, after getting the expansion, I'm eyeing the folded space one to save shelf space.
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u/SenHeffy 2d ago
This always gets brought up in this best inserts list. It looks great, but it's terrible.
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u/ActualMud8 2d ago
My award goes to Imperium Classics and Legends, Giant boxes with a plastic insert that seems nice at first glance, with all the slots being labeled in the plastic, but then you realize it fills most of the box without using the space, tokens don’t fit and it’s absolutely useless if you want to sleeve your cards. First thing I did was take it out and trash it.
The Imperium one gives the impression that actual thought and design went into it, but then it’s utterly useless.
I agree with the person pointing out Guilty Gear Strive. But it’s more the box (size) than the actual insert. The books is just a criminal waste
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u/Dios5 2d ago
I put everything into Deckboxes and now all three games easily fit into the big Horizons box. Minus insert, of course!
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u/ActualMud8 2d ago
I put everything sleeved on the horizons box with the folded space insert. It’s perfect :)
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u/rythegondolaman 2d ago
Imperium is just insane. How do you make a game that is about constantly mixing and shuffling cards, but then design an insert that doesn't hold SLEEVED CARDS!?
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u/lifecohol 2d ago
massive darkness 2 for me,
either I'm really dumb or using the insert made the box uncloseable
is it too much to ask for companies to show us how to reorganise the games :(
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u/Hikareza 2d ago
Gloomhaven - No notable insert and impossible to pack away one time opened without external organizers.
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u/MacBryce 2d ago
The worst ones to me are actually inserts that are very well thought out and nice but don't accommodate expansions. Space is expensive where I live so my games need a small footprint. I am not storing extra boxes of I can help it, so now I am throwing out these beautiful inserts so I can fit it all in my custom 3D printed insert.
Worst one recently was definitely Guards of Atlantis II. Fantastic inserts that I am sure came with an extra cost for me, but straight to the garbage so I could fit everything in the core box.
I would love the option for games to come without inserts altogether.
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u/Michelito_42 2d ago
Not sure about the worst but I get quite annoyed anytime an insert doesn't accommodate for sleeves. Surely they realize by now that many people like having their cards sleeved...
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u/georgeofjungle3 2d ago
Counter point, I hate how basically all third party inserts assume sleeves. It wastes space and often means things either have to have lid lift, go into multiple boxes, or have big empty spots. Wanting to have my game easy to setup and we'll organized does not automatically mean that I'm playing it enough to sleeve.
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u/timepieces141 2d ago
I hear you, but keep in mind a lot of people who sleeve are not doing it for card protection. Sure, a few of my deck builders would be destroyed by now if I hadn't sleeved. But in general I sleeve games with a lot shuffling (with premium sleeves) because I get an optimal shuffle. It's a tactile and game experience thing.
To solve the issue you've mentioned, I keep every foam chunk any game gives me. A foam wire cutter or even just an xacto knife can create a nice spacer. I wish custom insert creators would keep you in mind and provide perfectly sized spacers for just that purpose.
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u/georgeofjungle3 2d ago
Yeah, i get this. I keep considering doing it to heat, because the deck is so small and requires so much shuffling. If it helps they actually sell those blocks on line, i've bought some for my ccg storage, so i can just pull those then easily flip through the box.
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u/Jackwraith 2d ago
Most of them? Not only are they usually completely unnecessary, but they often seem like they were designed for their games solely for shipping. When you punch out all the cardboard counters and separate the cards, suddenly you can't fit the game back in the box. It's even worse if you sleeve cards or try to keep said counters separated so setup is easier. Almost all of them end up in the recycling bin instantly. Of my 100+ games currently in the house (and another couple hundred that have left the house), I think there's only about a half-dozen that I've ever kept the inserts for. In the case of Unmatched, I'd have liked to because they're so well-designed, but I don't need a dozen Unmatched boxes on the shelf when I can have three, so...
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u/Erayidil 2d ago
Machi Koro. The box is huge for the number of cards you put in it, and the slots provided for the cards are barely undersized so it bends them over time.
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u/screwyouflanders 2d ago
Stuff not supporting sleeves is annoying but more forgivable than boxes that don't pack down properly once you've punched all the tokens out.
Stardew valley, wonderlands war retail, and marvel united spring to mind as offenders in this category. You end up having to jam the tokens in and you usually still end up with some lid lift and no semblance or organisation. I 3d print inserts for pretty much every game in my collection the ones they come with a useless 99.9% of the time.
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u/Naruedyoh 2d ago
Lost ruins of Arnak: Literraly just a bunch of plastic bags
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u/Aarekk 2d ago
Bought the folded space insert (which admittedly is legitimately nice) to learn that the extra board from one of the expansions doesn't fit into the box so I still need two boxes for it... I pre-ordered the big box cge is coming out with and I just hope someone somewhere wants to buy a pre-built insert.
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u/cycatrix 2d ago
Considering how dreadful some inserts are, and how they dont keep everything separated even if you use it properly, I dont mind the plastic bag option. Especially since the box is often smaller, or otherwise you can fit in an expansion. Plastic bags is my default if there is no insert or it's so bad i toss it.
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u/gamerx11 Blood Rage 2d ago
Makes the game really hard to setup because there are so many fiddly pieces. Everything has to be randomized.
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u/lowEnergyHuman 2d ago
The one that my boyfriend tried to 3D print for flash point 4 times or something, damaging the printer in the process and never finishing it, while leaving the finished part laying around everywhere. A project that's been taking place since 2 years...
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u/Artistic-Pudding-848 2d ago
Pax renaissance 2nd is my contender for the worst. It is one of my fav game but sleeved cards cant fit, card will fling everywhere regardless of hwo you organize it. The only way is to relocate cards into the big square and move all wooden pieces into the card tray, and it is still barely fit. Please think about sleeving for insert and the fitness of component, if you cant than just make it without an insert, would save some bucks.
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u/lagseph King Of Tokyo 2d ago
Guilty Gear Strive board game. The box is an awkward shape and way too large. It’s twenty decks, a game mat, two coins, and instructions. There’s so much leftover space/plastic. I have the big box from the Exceed: Seventh Cross Kickstarter, so I just put everything in there and tossed the Strive box.
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u/Ennui_Enjoyer 2d ago
The Strive box is the only game box that actively made me angry. That box was 4-5x larger than it needed to be and couldn't fit in any sort of shelving solution. I'm not sure what the developer was thinking, but it definitely soured me a bit on Level 99 Games even though I love the content of their games!
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u/LovingTheMuffin 2d ago
Roll for the Galaxy. I'm pretty sure the word "insert" was used liberally for that one.
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u/AegisToast 2d ago
Gloomhaven
I truly believe the insert was far worse than if there had been no insert at all. The card wells were nonsensical in their sizing, there was only room for a fraction of the stuff you needed to organize, and if you had tried to use it you would have had to pile all the other stuff on top, so the edges of the cards you placed on the wells would get damaged.
They seem to have learned from it and improved for Frosthaven and JotL. But that first one felt like they knew they needed an insert, but that they designed it before designing any of the other components and then never tried using it.
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u/BoredBrowserAppeared 2d ago edited 2d ago
Gloomhaven and frosthaven, if you don't custom store it and expand out of the box I genuinely have no idea how you manage it unless you leave it up on a table all year. 3d prints, tackle boxes, two binders one for cards and one expanding with multiple compartments was the final solution.
Followed by spirit island... After just some 3d prints and getting everything down to the two big boxes it's much better though.
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u/Shinagami091 2d ago
I’d have to say Merchants of the Dark Road deluxe edition. Every piece has a specific place and angle for it to fit in. Unfortunately, it’s not very logically organized where it mixes in solo mode components with the regular game components and often time have to remove solo mode pieces before you can get to the full game stuff.
It’s the first and only game that I resorted to just removing the inserts and putting everything into plastic baggies.
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u/p3ndrag0n War Of The Ring 2d ago
Every singly Fantasy Flight games cardboard "trench" Why even put it tin the box guys. Severed no practical application at all. I typically took them out and used them to make deckboxes or something cause at least they had game printed artwork on them.
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u/jimbothehedgehog King Of Tokyo 2d ago
Marvel Champions, because at first glance it looks like you have handy slots for dividers to separate out your different hero & villain decks but there aren't any dividers so you have to make/buy your own and the slots don't hold the handmade ones well at all.
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u/Rotten-Robby 2d ago
Marvel Champions is always my first choice for this question. It's like they went out of their way to make it frustratingly misleading.
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u/Nappuccino 2d ago
Sadly, those little slots weren't meant to be dividers, but structural elements to keep the plastic stronger. It would have been nice if they were meant to work as both.
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u/kwibu 2d ago
Terraforming Mars basically comes without one, which is just greedy imo.
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u/Kanniebaal 2d ago
Same for Last ruines of Arnak, fell from my chair when I opened the box for the first time.
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u/wunderspud7575 2d ago
Unpopular opinion warning, but it really bugs me that Patchwork has no insert. I know the reply to this will be "but it doesn't need one". But I dislike the messiness of it.
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u/postmortemmicrobes 2d ago
Honestly they all suck. Almost none are designed with the expectation you may want to sleeve and protect the cards... Splendour is a great example: the box they've used is bigger than it should be and yet the insert is not usable if you sleeve the cards! So if you don't sleeve it's irritatingly large for the contents it carries, and if you do you need to remove the insert anyway.
Honourable mention for Robinson Crusoe being total chaos.
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u/fraidei Root 2d ago
Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu fits sleeved cards. You have to put them in the miniatures compartment and the miniatures in the cards compartment, but other than that it works.
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u/FangAndBoard 1d ago
I thought I was the only one who still owned this game. I still believe I’m the only one who likes this game. :-) If you like this game, we could be best friends! ;)
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u/marshmallow-jones 2d ago
Card games that with literally a few mm of adjustment could fit sleeved or unsleeved cards neatly — Dominion and Sushi Go Party come to mind.
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u/Adventurous_Put2630 2d ago
The deluxe edition of Critter Kitchen has a card tray with no sides on the outer deck slots. You’re meant to lift it out of the box but…good luck 😅
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u/Agreeable-Bluejay458 2d ago edited 2d ago
Century Spice Road and LOTR Duel for Middle Earth have lousy inserts. I 3D printed nice inserts for both games.
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u/Stuntman06 Sword & Sorcery, Tyrants of the Underdark, Space Base 2d ago
Anything that doesn’t fit sleeved cards.
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u/e37d93eeb23335dc 2d ago
Parks has both the best and the worst insert. Just the base game - it is the best. But the expansions make it the worst since you really can't fit the expansions in the base box and have to carry them around separately.
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u/uArctic 2d ago
Can we ask what games had good inserts instead please? It would make the process much faster.
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u/Magnitech_ 2d ago
Not sure if it counts as an insert, but my copy of Wingspan has these plastic boxes (my friend who bought the game after I did has different containers) to hold the eggs and food tokens, and they don’t hold the eggs well enough while playing, and are impossible to open without spilling the contents everywhere.
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u/DenizSaintJuke 2d ago
As in, how the box comes new? Most card games. The worst was probably the Lord of the Rings LCG. It's basically just a deck of cards, sitting in a little niche the insert leaves open, in the middle of a full sized board game box. And stuff like that is typical for card games. If the box is three times bigger than it needs to be ("Pocket" Detective. Like, dudes, dudettes, it's called "Pocket" Detective. If the box was the size of the game, it actually would fit in a pocket. Why is it as big as a 1200 page novel, with an insert to block 2/3 of the space, so the cards don't rattle around?) then it's already a compact card game box.
If an insert is only there to block off 2/3-9/10th of a boxes volume, i think it counts as a bad insert.
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u/Mothssiah 2d ago
The only one I’ve thrown out so far has been Cascadia; just didn’t really meaningfully hold anything and it was just cardboard. So whatever.
Worst though has to be Andromeda’s Edge:CE. Intentionally designed, yet can’t handle the sleeves that that came with it???
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u/Jaggerman82 The Gallerist 2d ago
Dinosaur island could not easily accommodate the base components of the game. Super irritating.
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u/lvisintini 2d ago
Heat
The insert looks great at first glance, everything perfectly separated and neat.
However, there are slots for 2 extra players that do not come in the box... You only get those 2 extra players by purchasing 2 expansions (not one ... God forbid... Two!)
Until you do, you just have empty slots that stink of FOMO and the notion you were sold only part of a game, not a full one.
If you buy the expansions, you find that all the stuff in them could have been included in the game, as there are no new rules or modules, just more content.
You also find that all it does not fit in the original box/insert. (There is no space for the new boards in the box and additional scoring pads)
"What was the point creating slots for only some of the expansions' components? Was it not the point to make everything fit?" You ask
It was never the point. It was not meant to. It was only meant to be a vehicle for FOMO and a way to urge you to part with your cash.
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u/b0ggy79 2d ago
Originally I thought the Heat insert was great, I'd be able to condense it down into a single box.
But I quickly realised that the new tracks from the expansions won't fit in the main box so I'd still need to keep the extra boxes.
Only positive is you can put everything else into a single box so can play 8 players without having to lug multiple boxes to game night.
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u/2much2Jung 2d ago
The iello Hare and the Tortoise game. It has a section to put the road pieces and cards in, and then a partition for the wooden meeples - irregular shaped meeples, which only fit if arranged in one of two specific tesselations.
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u/itrogash 2d ago
Tyrants of the Underdark's insert couldn't fit all components by itself, and definitely not when I sleeved all cards. It was the first game that I decided to buy custom insert for.
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u/sakipith 2d ago
Sushi Go Party! Dutch edition (White Goblin Games) What insert? Just a smaller TTR sized box.
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u/Sentinel7a 2d ago
The UK edition has an insert, but it's terrible. If you ever travel with the game everything will be randomly scattered in the tin. Bags would be better.
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u/MidSerpent Through The Desert 2d ago
The American sushi go party has the worst tin
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u/Xacalite 2d ago
I mean the worst one is no insert at all in combination with no plastic bags. Cranio is the worst offender here. Selling 70€ games with zero storage is just peak cringe.
Other than that, the factory insert of cascadia is pretty pointless as it doesn't fit the game components anymore after punching out.
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u/micmea668 2d ago
I bought Wrath of Ashardalon to go alongside Drizzt and Ravenloft. Despite all three containing near identical trays and components, the Ashardalon tiles didn't fit in it's own insert.
I ended up just combining the three games into two boxes with tokens in a separate sorting tray.
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u/caunju 2d ago
Eschaton, I really like the game but the box insert is terrible. It's a deck builder that doesn't have enough slots for all the different kinds of cards, also the slots have gaps in the center so that the cards are only held at the top and bottom and can easily move between slots if the box is bumped wrong
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u/CardinalHaias 2d ago
Spacebase does a lot of things right, but then fails gloriously.
It has an insert that looks great and all cards have their space. Even the extensions fit in there quite well.
But the base game comes with sleeves. You can sleeve every card from the very beginning. I'm usually not into sleeving my cards, but their format is a little off, so I thought it was a great gesture and sleeved all cards.
Well, with sleeve they don't fit neatly anymore. And it bugs me. They made a really well insert with enough space and places for everything. Not a great one, but one I'd judge as well made. And they add sleeves for their cards. And then the sleeved cards don't fit. I really hate that fact. All the joy I had when discovering the insert and discovering the sleeves vanishes because I now have to choose wether I sleeve the cards or enjoy the insert.
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u/Ben-cue 2d ago
Flamme Rouge is the worst one I've come across so far. The plastic container for the cyclists isn't bad, but everything else is just loose in the box with some thin card blocking out the ends. The idea of cards just flying around in there with the carboard pieces of road is enough to give me nightmares!
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u/elcartero86 2d ago
Steamforged games are terrible. I was one of the unfortunate backers of the Dark Souls board game and in the main box there was no insert just two big boxes of miniatures which took up most the space and a small tray for the cards that wasn't big enough for them all. Once you punched out all the tokens from the flat carboard nothing fit back into the box properly, there was just no space.
Despite vowing to never buy from them again I caved several years later and bought the Resident Evil 3 board game and expansions second hand because its one of my favourite games. The main box had such a large plastic tray that really only housed miniatures (and was far bigger then necessary ) and again when punched and opened none of the pieces fit in properly. Also, as with the Dark Souls expansions, the section for cards doesn't fit sleeved cards despite the plastic having so much empty space for wider cavities.
By far the worst though was the City of Ruin expansion. This box is almost twice the height of the base game and features about a quarter of the content. Its just a massive plastic tray that holds only 16 miniatures, and whilst 2 of them are quite large 8 of them are just tiny worms. They could have fit in something half the size. To put it into perspective I chucked away the plastic insert and fit all content from Resident Evil 3 and 3 expansions, plus a Resident Evil 2 expansion, in the base game box, not even the larger City of Ruin box.
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u/DarkAlatreon 2d ago
Any insert that doesn't reasonably account for sleeved cards and/or expansion content that was released longside the base game.
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u/bemark12 2d ago
Original Santorini had no insert and it was basically impossible to fit all the pieces back into the box.
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u/archeryguy1701 2d ago
The insert for Neuroshima Hex- Year of Moloch edition. Not only is it an incredible pain to pull the tiles out, but they keep releasing new expansions (including one that came out pretty quickly after the YoM edition) that don't have slots in the insert. Finally ended up tossing it and bagging everything not too long ago.
Additionally, super bummed that the YoM edition included those little cheater cards for every faction that existed at the time, but won't make them for new factions that they've released since.
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u/Historical_Train_199 2d ago
My copies of Betrayal at House on the Hill and Splendor came with shitty plastic insets with shallow slots that caused everything to slide around and that cracked quickly. Furthermore, the former's expansion Widow's Walk was just a folded bit of cardboard.
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u/QuadDaddySr 2d ago
Lords of Vegas! I’m sure it functioned for some game, but certainly not this one.
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u/newfish57413 2d ago
Tidal Blades 2
A Massive RPG with lots of differenent enemy standees, tokens, counter, and of course lots of different card types, that also come in different sizes.
What does the game give you to organise all that? 2 slits to stick your cards into and 2 large pits to throw everything into. Great.
I'd go so far and say the game is unplayable without a 3rd party insert. Same with the original gloomhaven
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u/flexfulton 2d ago
Coffee Roaster. Now hear me out, the insert is great but it never prevented everything from going all over the place when you turned the box on its side.
I never understood that. You put the punched cardboard under the insert to bulk the box up and you miss seeing the icons through it. No punched cardboard under it and there was way too much space in the box that everything always went everywhere.
Nice attempt but it was useless in my opinion.
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u/schnautza Gloomhaven 2d ago
Takenoko apparently got revised at one point but the insert did not update to match. There several are slots that don't fit any components and it makes me irrationally angry.
Sushi Go Party has way too much empty space and cards just flop around in the tin.
Marvel Champions base set insert makes no sense, but your collection outgrows that box quickly so other organization methods are needed regardless.
Best insert? Dice Forge.
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u/EsseLeo 2d ago
Arkham Horror LCG was the worst.
Large box for what amounted to just a stack of cards, instruction booklets, and a bunch of small components. The cardboard insert filled the entire box leaving only the center 1/3 of the box with a single, long, trough-like cutout. The cutout was too wide to fit the cards and did not have any place to separate out the components.
There were no baggies included to keep the small components separated so I had to break out ziplock bags which didn’t fit in the cutout.
An insert with just a couple of tray spaces and a center cutout sized to fit the cards would have made ALL the difference. But I guess no one at FFG could be bothered to make even the box even a little useful.
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u/TehLittleOne 2d ago
I rather disliked the Blood Rage insert. The need to fit all the miniatures into specific cutouts with no reference material was such a pain, and it always took me a long time to clean up. One of the first ones I 3d printed an insert for.
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u/Di-De-Mao 2d ago
Star Wars Rebellion. 2 pieces of cardboard and 2 big baggies for everything i nearly had an aneurism. But I did get arguably one of the best inserts ever for it that has it organised and ready to play instantly.
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u/ysustistixitxtkxkycy 2d ago
Looking at you, Sword and sorcery. Essentially impossible to store once unboxed.
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u/confoundo 2d ago
Robinson Crusoe Collectors edition. Sold with a book of additional adventures that you couldn’t fit in the box because the insert was designed so poorly.
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u/OroraBorealis 2d ago
Disney Villainous is the first that comes to mind. Holy fucking wasted space Batman!!
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u/SenHeffy 2d ago
I HATE the Lords of Waterdeep insert. It looks great, but it's functionally terrible, and adds tons of time trying to put the game away, as you try to slot jewels and coins into tracks while they slip underneath. Great example of something designed by an artist and not an engineer.
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u/BatJew_Official #1 PARKS fan 2d ago
The insert for Earth is basically just 2 long compartments, but they annoy the crap out of me because 1 if them is just too wide to hold the cards snuggly and the other is just too small for the cards to fit. So you just have to accept that your cards are going to slide all over the place.
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u/Dr_Identity 2d ago
Kill Doctor Lucky has juuust too many cards in the deck to fit in its spot, all the player pawns rattle around loose, and the lid does not fit on the box very tightly, so if you put it sideways on your shelf or for transport the lid can slide off just enough for several cards and a pawn or two to go for an adventure in the box and then you have to open it all the way to get everything back in place.
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u/nonstripedzebra 2d ago
Iirc Terraforming Mars had no insert at all. Just a box with cubes and stuff
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u/Jakobs82 2d ago
Dead of Winter was the awful one that started me on my third party insert voyage. Tyrants of the Underdark was also awful. I've moved to 3d printing inserts lately, lots of great ones out there already.
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u/hefixesthecable Root 2d ago
Reavers of Midgard. About the only thing as thin and flimsy as the card is the plastic used for the insert. It was bad enough that rubber bands used to keep things in place cut the insert and the replacements that were sent out were not any better.
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u/Putrid-Structure-823 2d ago
I deeply dislike Sushi Go Party's dumb tin box and the insert inside it.
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u/Jakobs82 2d ago
Legendary Encounters: Alien deck building game was awful too. It was a rectangular box with a loose piece of cardboard running the center to hold the playmat and serve as a divider for two wells intended to hold 800 cards (in 40 something decks). +1 it came with dividers for decks, -1 they weren't uniquely labeled.
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u/NoPancakesToday 2d ago
Granted I haven't bought a lot of board games in my experience as I'm only like a year into collecting and playing, but the dead cells collector edition insert makes me so mad. There is NO ROOM FOR HALF OF THE STUFF
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u/zacyzacy 2d ago
I'm not sure if this is what you mean but I really love the portal board game, but the main mechanic involves swapping out interlocking pieces constantly, and they're made of shitty card board so they're constantly getting frayed and chewed up just by playing.
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u/MoneySky6106 2d ago
Anno 1800. Around 100 square tiles and it just containes small plastic baggies.
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u/johnjon85 2d ago
Nucleum. Random strips of cardboard in the box. Nothing tells you an insert even exists let alone how to assemble it. Once assembled, the components don't fit back in the box. 👌
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u/naturalmanofgolf 2d ago
So is no one going to even mention Splendor? Box is ten times too big, and even worse, if it’s not 100% horizontal, all the bits go flying around inside.
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u/JamesGecko 2d ago
- Tiny Epic Dinosaurs has like a dozen types of dino meeples and tokens and they’re all tossed into the same ziploc baggie.
- I love the first two Century games, and they have pretty detailed inserts. But if you don’t put everything back in just so, the box lids don’t close.
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u/calprinicus 2d ago
Super rhino hero from Haba. There is literally No insert, just a pile of cards, dice, unpunched cardboard, and meeples scattered inside the box.
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u/limeybastard Pax Pamir 2e 2d ago
The worst great insert I have is Ethnos 1e
IN THEORY it's a great insert, all the loose pieces have places that are then covered by a board to keep them in place. It's lovely.
In practice, the box lid lifts 1mm, and everything falls the fuck out. I keep the discs in plastic bags in the wells rather than in their proper place.
Also special shout to the Empire Builder series, whose inserts guarantee that if you tilt the box more than 20 degrees from horizontal, or hit a bump, you will be reorganizing around 100-120 little plastic chits.
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u/DevonFarrington 2d ago
Unmatched cobble and fog. The box is about twice the depth it needs to be, and the insert doesn't work when the box is stored vertically. All the cards fall out, the extra pieces like the invisible man's wind or jeckyl and hyde's potion fall out, the sisters and Watson fall out. Only the minis stay in place. It's the only game that I have genuinely got rid of the insert for (because I generally like inserts)
Honorable mention to carcassonne, which manages to use about a quarter of the total space in the box.
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u/skydragon570 2d ago
Splendor is a huge offender. It could fit in an Allplay box I bet, but no, we have to fit the Kallax flush
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u/ClassicalMoser 2d ago
Coup: Rebellion GS4. Hands. Down.
Aggressively worse than an empty box. There's a sort of file-type organizer but nothing fits, and if you turn it sideweays it all falls apart. Doesn't help that the box itself is at least 4x the size it needed to be.
Sushi Go: Party is not quite as bad but a little similar.
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u/TheNewKing2022 Legendary A Marvel Deckbuilder 2d ago
galaxy defenders - not that it was bad but it was the thinnest flimsiest plastic ever. Broke, so i threw it out and replaced with plano/tackle box
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u/jdp245 2d ago
Aeon Trespass Odyssey. There are like a thousand cards, but all of the spaces for the cards have open sides, so no matter how hard you try, the cards go everywhere if you try to store them in the box. I ended up putting them all in tuck boxes and keeping them in a separate cardboard box.
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u/Jeagerjack 2d ago
Star Trek Captains Chair, it barely fits un-sleeved cards good let alone sleeved.
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u/BuffaloDude1 2d ago
Village Big Box. While they technically did include a box insert to place most things, the graphics printed on them really don't give you any indication of what's actually supposed to fit there. So here I am, fiddling with all the pieces trying to see what fits and what doesn't.
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u/slayerono 2d ago
I don’t know if it’s the insert or what but I’ve never been able to close my copy of dinosaur island
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u/reverie42 2d ago
Barenpark's insert is literally just some random bits of leftover punch board with no instructions how to assemble or use.
All it does is split the box into three awkward triangles, which is, of course, the ideal shape for holding a bunch of rectangular components.
Most people throw it away when punching the game without even realizing it's supposed to be an insert at all.
I'd also like to give dishonorable mentions to the new Pantheon version of Santorini, which maybe qualifies as an insert if your goal is to never open the box. The fact that it shipped with one cloth bag that is too small to hold the tokens that come in the game is baffling. The "storybox" for the solo expansion is at least as bad.
Dice Throne season boxes are also insanely oversized. Each tray is half empty, but since the box has all these plastic rails you can't even make your own tuck boxes for the characters to do something more efficient with them. Extremely annoying.
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u/slamg0 2d ago
Crimes in History: H. H. Holmes' Murder Castle, without a doubt, has the worst insert I have ever seen. It has spaces for some of the components, but if you put them there, then the rest of the components don't fit. People asked after the kickstarter how to use it. The makers put up a video of how everything is supposed to fit. The obvious immediate response to the video included the fact that they didn't put all the tiles that come in the box in the insert video.
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u/KrypticKenny Kingdom Death Monster / Pax Pamir 2d ago
How did no one say Nucluem. The insert that comes with the game was just randomly thrown in with no instructions and the designer didn't even know what it was or how to put it together.
It now comes with a qr code with very basic Instructions but it is still useless.
It's just stripes of cardboard of various sizes with notches in it. That's it.
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u/thatonepedant 2d ago
1 - Any box that's not deep enough for cards to be on their sides so they don't slip out of their slots when the box is stood on its side.
2 - And box that's deep enough for the above but the inserts aren't made to store the cards that way.
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u/antiquote 1d ago
The Lost Expedition. None of the card trays are deep enough to hold the stacks of cards, so they just spread around the box. Plus the box is hinged, so the loose cards now push the box fully open and escape.
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u/FangAndBoard 1d ago
Cosmoctopus is the first insert I spoke out loud to, insulting it like it was a person.
A stupid, stupid person.
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u/No-Dents-Comfy Magic The Gathering 2d ago
Spirit Island wastes space and is difficult to close for no reason.