I know Jason hates the "look at what my cube looks like IRL" posts on Reddit, but with the recent discussion about marking sleeves for modules I'm curious about what other people's cubes look like - storage, sleeves, division of sections, alters, customs, foils, lands, etc.
dice are in the little drawer, blue sleeves are my custom tokens, my Jumpstart packs are on the right, Commander decks in the red box, not-Jumpstarted cube cards and basic lands on the far left. i keep a few spare sleeves in there too.
Can't recommend that box enough. The latches never come undone, but are very easy to open. I keep my lands in the top left section and cube in the rest. Might use one of the small compartments for tokens.
my current cube only exists in the spirit realm, but I can dig out Sigh, a Cube I suppose. The storage situation wouldn't be changing anyways.
Pine box holds everything. Cube is in the middle, with cardboard deckboxes to pad it tight. From top left going clockwise it's
- Cycling lands availabe as basics
- Tokens, one type of sleeve per token type
- Dice
- Cool dice that are like "+1 and -1 counters" and stuff like that
- More dice
- Five cubbies for the five types of basics.
Photo 1 Far Left: Core Module, organized by section. I cut some cardboard when I was moving to make the dividers and put stickers from an old Gift Box I had been saving for years. A sample from the cards in front of it. (Photo 2) Center Left: Occasionals Module, organized by section. A sample from the cards in front of it. (Photo 3) Center Right, Top: Dice for life and counters (blue for +1/+1, red for -1/-1). Far Right, Top: Basic lands and spare sleeves. Most basics are singleton. Matching sets of Theros Beyond Death and Unstable also available. (Photo 4) Right, Bottom: Two decks I built to test some cards. WRg Equipment laid out and UG Madness stacked. (Photo 5)
Can't recommend that box enough. The latches never come undone, but are very easy to open. I keep my lands in the top left section and cube in the rest. Might use one of the small compartments for tokens.
The easiest way from what I found is literally just google the store that you would be buying it from on Amazon and bingo bango, they sell it off Amazon too, often cheaper because they don't have Amazon taking 20% or whatever.
The purple boxes are empty for now, but I imagine that I'll be using them to store the excess cards when I assemble the draft boosters. It's all single-sleeved because it's basically commons and uncommons anyways. The basic lands stay in the white box, and I have extra sleeves in case something goes wrong.
I just built this cube, and I'm awkwardly just missing 4 cards that are not from the Modern Horizons sets, so I can't vouch for this setup just yet.
For the last few years, my main cube has been in my PirateLab case, and right now, that cube is the Two-Headed Showdown:
Besides all the dog hair, the case has a pocket that I store some playmats that I've collected throughout the years so we can use while playing.
I have these inner Fat Pack cases that keep most of the sleeved cards, as they tend to snag if you are removing a lot of cards straight from the foam compartments. I usually have the loose cards in deck boxes, but I was doing some changes recently and I have no drafts booked in the near future, so it's all disorganized right now.
Basic lands and tokens go into the colored boxes, then the other boxes store the squadron cards, snow dual lands and additional tokens.
The PirateLab case has been great for carrying the cube around the city or as carry on luggage, although it can be quite heavy.
I've got a ton of Cubamajigs during their first Kickstarter. I have this archival box to store the ones that 'd use for my main cube. The archival box itself has been a huge boon to my cube life, as I don't need to keep the cards in the cubamajigs to save storage space in the house, and if we are building the boosters before the draft, I can just take the box in my backpack and we have all we need.
Somewhere in that box there's also 8 completely black cases, and 8 with a different art. These tend to be the first boosters of the draft, and are seeded with cards from the strategy slot (and previously with the test pool cards, for my previous cube).
I highly recommend Cubamajigs to everyone! Before these, I'd do stacks of 15 cards with a land in front, and I also played with @Velrun when he used envelopes and ziplock bags for boosters in the past, and I gotta tell you that this is the best solution so far, as you might imagine from a product design exactly for this use. They are running a Kickstarter right now, if you haven't heard of it, so it's a good moment to get a set at a decent price. I am not involved with them or sponsored in any shape or form. I just like the product!
Now, for marked sleeves, I used to just paint a box with silver markers and write on top with a permanent marker, like these examples above. The squadron cards would all be marked in the bottom-left corner, so I could easily flip through the drafted cards and separate them.
That's in the past now, as I've switched to using custom-made sleeves that I got done through Alter Sleeves:
I went for a minimalistic design that would make the cards easily recognizable as a multi-pick card. The copy that goes in the draft has a marker of how many you get, and the frame design is replicated on the other cards to make them easy to identify.
You can technically buy these sleeves yourself through my alter sleeves page, but they are super expensive, so I can't really recommend. I can get them at a discount because I was the one that uploaded them, but otherwise, I would not have bothered. If you are good with the photoshops, you can apply as an alterist and get your own custom sleeves printed as well!
Before these, I'd do stacks of 15 cards with a land in front, and I also played with @Velrun when he used envelopes and ziplock bags for boosters in the past, and I gotta tell you that this is the best solution so far, as you might imagine from a product design exactly for this use.
I went for a minimalistic design that would make the cards easily recognizable as a multi-pick card. The copy that goes in the draft has a marker of how many you get, and the frame design is replicated on the other cards to make them easy to identify.
You can technically buy these sleeves yourself through my alter sleeves page, but they are super expensive, so I can't really recommend. I can get them at a discount because I was the one that uploaded them, but otherwise, I would not have bothered. If you are good with the photoshops, you can apply as an alterist and get your own custom sleeves printed as well!
I am, indeed! But be advised that you are looking at something like 2,5€ per sleeve even using the alterists pricing, but depending on what you need, I think we can brainstorm some cool solutions!
Finding suitable storage has been tough! Anyone have a box recommendation for ... ~48 cubamajigs/dragon shield cube shells plus basics (thinking ~200 lands in two 100ct dragon shield boxes) and tokens/dice/etc?
I have a purple ArkHive (same as @VincePendrell ) for 36 dragon shield cube shells plus tokens/dice (and then two 100 ct dragon shield boxes for 20x5 basics double sleeved). I'd prefer a box to hold it all, but I also don't want something *so* huge that it won't fit into a backpack. Four Dragon Shield Cube Shells fit nicely into a Dragon Shield Deck Shell (and I plan on getting 8 for nesting in the ArkHive so players can keep their decks & sideboards together).
I've also not really found a great, nice box for ~180ct + basics + tokens. Looking for recommendations there too. (Ultimate Guard Twin Flip'n'Tray 200+ kinda works at 162+lands but it's too tight for dice+tokens to fit comfortably; BCW 300-400ct are functional but ugly.)
For anybody else who's followed @Brad 's good advice and gotten a KMC 1000 box, here's how you get the large, ugly sticker off:
1. Peel off as best you can -- the better the peel, the less mess you'll have to clean.
2. If sticky residue remains, use olive oil or coconut oil to remove. You'll have to scrub like the dickens
3. Use warm water and dish soap to remove the oil, then use a clean cloth to dry. You shouldn't see much cloudiness on top of the plastic if you've done it right.
4. Let it dry well before putting any cards in it, obviously!
I've also not really found a great, nice box for ~180ct + basics + tokens. Looking for recommendations there too. (Ultimate Guard Twin Flip'n'Tray 200+ kinda works at 162+lands but it's too tight for dice+tokens to fit comfortably; BCW 300-400ct are functional but ugly.)
I've been doing research on card boxes - probably more than I'll do before I buy my next vehicle.
The Gamegenic Cards Lair 400+ looks very nice for a small cube, up to maybe 240 cards. I figure I can get 240 cube + 120 basics in the main compartment, and tokens can go in one of the drawers with dice in the top compartment. I also want an extra land pile, so that gets the second drawer. This wouldn't fit Cubeamajigs, so I'd probably do the adhesive backed currency wraps idea for packs. Then I can discard the wraps and quickly stick the cards back in the box when we're done playing.
For a bigger cube, they also make a Cards Lair Pro 1000+ with two rows. That looks like a really nice box to me. I like that one compared to their Dungeon boxes, because the Dungeon card rows are almost an inch too wide so they can fit Commander deck boxes. That would annoy me. You can get their Card Rail organizer insert, but that doesn't look as cool to me.
All of the Gamegenic stuff is pretty expensive, but hardly anybody else makes boxes with a removable top. I think that's a nice quality of life feature. A big flap in the way on your table isn't what you want.
I'd also like to have open slots for basics that are exposed as soon as I open the top of the box, rather than having to split them up by hand. I like the five cubbies in Sigh's pine box - that's really cool. I could see putting some basic land boxes on one side of a Cards Lair Pro 1000+ and the cube + basics on the other side. Since one side can be either a narrow or an extra wide row (by removing the acrylic divider) it would be possible to add wider land boxes if I found something that looks nice.
I'll probably buy one of the card lair products. I just need to decide if I want to go minimalist (more realistic for the 3-4 person cube sessions) or go with the bigger one and allow something fancier with a land station and some Cubeamajig packing.
I've played with the dimensions of some cube products. Here are a couple of CAD screenshots that incorporate custom 3D printed compartments.
First is a setup for a 180 card cube in a Gamegenic Dungeon 550 with 3D printed inserts. When you can design your own inserts and print them, there are some interesting possibilities. The Dungeons have an 89 mm wide compartment (compared to 68 mm card width), so you can gain some capacity by orienting some of the cards sideways. The gold piece is a 6 slot land station that has 27 mm wide compartments. I'm figuring about 0.8 mm per double sleeved card to avoid having to really squish them in there, so that fits around 33 basics per slot.There's also a sideways compartment after that to fit around 100 cards, which could be tokens and miscellaneous stuff. The narrow one is intended for a few dice, and the long one is sized to fit the 180 cards for the cube.
For a slightly bigger cube, you can ditch the sideways tokens compartment and instead put those in the extra basic land slot, depending on how many you need. If they're unsleeved, you can fit quite a few in that space. That gets the capacity to something like 270 double sleeved cards in the cube compartment.
For a bigger cube, you could switch that to a 1100+ card dungeon.
Next, here's a look at a possible setup with a Gamegenic Card Lair Pro 1000+ box. This has five separate printed land cases, plus a gold case for extra stuff like tokens. Those cases are printed to be used in the wider / shorter space. The other rail is longer and only fits the width of a sleeved card, so the cube goes in there. This screenshot below shows what a 360 card cube would look like if the cards are 0.8 mm each. That is, 80mm for a 100 card deck, and that's something you can more easily compare if you look up discussions about fitting Commander decks into deck boxes. From what I can tell, this would fit without having to cram and squish, but I need to play with some actual double sleeved cards and take my own measurements. I estimate that the long compartment can house about 540 double sleeved cards or 30 Cubeamajigs. For a 360 cube, there's space to spare, so that extra spot in the corner can be put to use for extra cards, sleeves, etc. This thing also has two drawers and a top compartment that can be used for dice and such. I like how this has a normal width rail for just cards but also the possibility of using the short side to add custom compartments for lands. This would sit with top open (because top is convertible and goes underneath the box), so the players just pull lands out of the box with no need to setup a land station.
I'm going to order up a product or two and make this happen, and at that point I just might have to start a new thread with some photos to show it off.
