Guards of Atlantis II Big Box Insert - Part One

Summary: A custom 3D printed insert for the 1st printing (big box) of Guards of Atlantis II that holds 45 heroes with zero lid lift, or 49–52 heroes with about 5 mm of lid lift (depending on configuration).

Over the past year, I have been working on my own version for a 3D printed insert for Guards of Atlantis 2. I am slowly printing out the parts but due to being so many of them, it is taking a lot of time. Here is a sneak peek at I stand at the moment... Note: I don't have lids printed yet and many of the boxes printed in the correct colours so I am using my prototype boxes as stand ins. I didn't want just a solid colour box so I made them print in two colours. If I did this again I would consider printing them with black and a colour for the hero difficulty so you could identify the hero difficulty without looking for stars.

For the first edition Guards Of Atlantis II ownbers, I found that the Tomb of Mastery does fit in one "Wide" box. This includes all cards and tower miniatures. This means if you want to keep it, you can store it with the other hero boxes.

My main objective with this insert is to fit all the existing heroes and have room for at least 10 more in the future. I also wanted everything to be organized in such as way that as you remove the parts, they get placed immediately. This means the main board must be at the top so that it can be laid out and then have everything else placed around it. I despise inserts that place the main board at the bottom of the box (Andromeda's Edge, I'm looking at you). Lets take a look to see where I am at...

There is zero lid lift. The manual(s) and the main board fit on top. There is room for a second main board if you happen to have one. The 1st Edition of GoA had different maps and I was tempted to keep it when GoA2 was announced but I decided not to worry about it and sold my copy when GoA2 arrived. I might make a personal copy of one in the future if I get bored.

Remove the manuals and main board, and you'll see:

• Two boxes for each side's minions, wave counters, and rubber bases
• A box of initiative cards. These will have each players name written on them and placed in initiative order when all the player cards get flipped. This helps with keeping track of player order when many people are involved.
• A box for money, wave counters, and tie-breaker token
• A box for hero cards (great for randomizing available heroes each game)
• One "wide" hero box (details below)

I'm considering merging the wave counters and tie-breaker into the randomizer box to free space for one more wide hero box.

My insert has two types of Hero boxes. A "Standard" and a "Wide" box. The hero and his cards and tokens (if applicable) are stored together in a box that has a lid so the components will not fall out regardless of which orientation the box is stored. Note that the cutout on the box allows the hero icon to be visible. There are also two spots on the sides for labels that will include the hero name and difficulty that will be glued in place (not done yet). This will allow the hero box to be easily identified from either end when stored in the main box.

Miniatures, sleeved cards, and tokens when pulled out. Note that some heroes are "w-i-d-e" so they need a wide box to fit. The majority of the heroes fit easily in the "standard" box. I use Paladin premium sleeves which I think are 90 or 100 microns thick. These cards fit in nicely and do have more room for more so I would guess it would fit thicker sleeves, but I have not tested that.

Here is an image of my prototype hero boxes with lids that snap into place so they won't accidentally open.

Here are my level trackers (discussed in a separate thread). 10 of these fit in the box and will be coloured blue and orange to make it easy to identify who is on which team via looking at player boards. The little tokens will have numbers on them which will be placed in the correct upgraded spot when a hero upgrades. The token store within the tracker so they won't get lost.

The two team boxes. They will be blue and orange and have lids as well. These hold each teams items.

With the above boxes removed, we are left with all the hero boxes. The above team boxes were made to fit in the space between 4 "Standard" hero boxes. So on this top layer we can have 8 standard heroes and 1 wide hero. Note the player mats are all stored on the side and there is room for more when Arty gets the itch to make some more (please less wide heroes Arty!).

BThe bottom layer which consists of most of the heroes. There are 32 "Standard" Hero Boxes and 4 "Wide" Hero boxes on this level.

Each box has a small finger cut out that allows you to pull them directly out. You can see the "inlay" where the glued labels will be put once I get time to make and print them. This means you can look at the layer in the box and identify where each hero is for easy removal without pulling them all out.

Now if Arty does decide to make a bunch more "Wide" Heroes, I need a way to handle that so if I need to add more wide boxes, I can stand them up and fit more at a cost of about 5 mm of lid lift. I did not have enough wide boxes to demonstrate this so I used multiple Standard prototype boxes to fill the space where more wide boxes would fit (since they are the same width when standing straight up). With this setup I can fit 32 Standard Heroes and 4 Wide Heroes on the bottom layer, and an additional 7 Wide Heroes and 4 Standard Heroes on the second layer. These numbers can be manipulated even more by swapping the boxes with each other. As I mentioned before, if Arty can refrain from making more wide heroes, it is less of an issue.

Here is the lid lift with the extra boxes, main board, and rules added in from the last image. As mentioned at the start, If we keep the boxes on their side (as in the first images), there is no lid lift.

I believe this system would work with the 2nd printing small box of GoA2 and could hold 12 Heroes with no lid lift but I would need to experiment with it to be sure.

I will continue to work on this and will most likely add more additional items like rocky terrain and an updated level tracker as I am not happy with what I have at this time.  Look for part two to see how things are going!

Be kind to one another, celebrate our differences, and remember to share our love of board gaming. Let's keep that front and center.

Till Next Time!