Dominion Storage Solutions

Introduction

Recently the "last" expansion for the card game Dominion was released (called Guilds), so a kickstarter popped up offering a complete Dominion storage solution. Although seriously a beautiful solution, it costs more than the entire set of Dominion games - the dividers alone are being tagged at $90(!!!).

When I began getting Dominion sets I noticed early on that a better storage/carrying solution was necessary, so I set out on my our mission to find a better storage solution. This article means to talk about the efforts I made (and hopefully will continue to make) as I try to come up with an economical and utilitarian solution.

Storage Solution 1: Simple Option

Separators [Instagram]

A while back I read this article on Tested.com about storage solutions for Dominion. It sounded like a decent solution, so I decided to give it a shot. However, I learned that some parts of the article weren't quite right for my needs, so I had to adapt a little. The article mentioned some acrylic card cases, which I chose to try out since my previous case solutions were all paper boxes for Magic cards, and this seemed like a more presentable solution. The article also mentioned plastic dividers, but the link to that product didn't look great (or correct for that matter), nor was it inexpensive.

I went to the Container Store and picked up 3 of the suggested card cases for about $15 each. I decided to cut up index cards instead of doing something fancy/overkill/expensive for tab dividers. I should note that I only have four Dominion sets at this point (Base set, Intrigue, Hinterlands and Guilds) so if you're trying to get the entire set together you may need to spend more than I spent.

Dividers [Instagram]

Index card before and after cutting

For the dividers I cropped about an inch and a half off the side of the index cards (enough so they'd fit in the card cases), and cropped the bottom to the last blue line (so cropping 2-3cm off the bottom). I created an angled tab afterward about halfway along the remaining part of the tab. I didn't make this an exact science, because I didn't feel it was really necessary to be exact. If index cards bend or wear, they should be relatively simple to replace.

Labeling [Instagram]

After creating the tabs, I used a Rapidograph pen to mark the coin costs and names per tab. A standard pen could also be used, but I like the clean thin lines that Rapidograph pens create. It also was getting clearanced out at a craft store at the time, so I splurged. (Note: Rapidograph pens are pricey, high maintenance pens that used to be used in drafting and illustration; less so in today's world of AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator.)

After writing out all the tabs I went to my local Staples store and picked up a set of Sharpie highlighters (5 pack). The 5 pack assortment mapped really well for Dominion colors:

Coloring [Instagram]

• Yellow = treasure
• Blue = reaction
• Green = victory
• Purple = curse and randomizer cards
• Orange = currently unused

I should also add that it was beneficial to write the names on the tabs prior to using the highlighters. Not only does it make sense to write what you want your cards to be first, but it also prevents the pen ink from bleeding off of the highlighter ink (as you can see below with the Tunnel card), although you could alternatively just wait a day.

Dominion cards later mixed their card colors a little, and the highlighter colors are distinguishable enough to still look good.

Finished solution with highlighters on the side.

Bleeding inks: the card on the left was heavy handed with the highlighter,
and the card on the right didn't wait for the highlighter to dry before writing.

Additional Notes

Organizing the cards in the cases.

This effort took me a couple of evenings, and works well. I didn't use all the included plastic separators that the acrylic containers provided, but I'm sure I may use those later. If you care about how I chose to organize the cases, the base set and Intrigue are each in their own case, and Hinterlands, Guilds and Promo cards are mixed in the third case.

Each case is separated into 5 slots by the heavy plastic separators that came with the cases (from back to front: Randomizer cards, Treasure/Promo, Victory/Curse, Action, Coins/Blanks/Other).

A small separator at the front allowed
for odds and ends like the Guild coins.

I kept the base set and Intrigue in their own cases, because if you want to take a minimal amount of Dominion with you (to teach friends or you have space constraints), these are the two sets that have the most significant effects on gameplay as far as offering larger player support. If I mix the two sets though I could probably minimize it to one container that supports up to 6 players.

In the future I think I may be trimming down the dividers a little more - when the dividers stand upright too much the container doesn't close properly, so that's definitely something to address.

One last thing worth mentioning are the rules, which I'm not dealing with as part of the solution. This is mainly because the easiest solution for this is having a smartphone with all the rules in PDF form. A lot of companies publish their rule books online, and phones are usually the secondary rules sheet anyway to look up errata or rules clarifications.

Conclusion

I think there are some additional avenues to go down for a solution to storing some/all Dominion cards. Personally I thought the kickstarter box was quite elegant is its appearance and design, and I'd love to build off of that while keeping it cheap. The folks that did the kickstarter also talked about it in a reddit post, which I plan to use as a reference for future alteration considerations. So hopefully in the long term I'll lead toward something nicer looking, but this solves the initial card carrying problem I had.