Board game box organisation is an art form. From the ‘chuck it all bags and stick it in an empty box approach’ of old-school Alea Euros, to the fits-like-a-glove solutions from the like of GameTrayz, there’s a wide spectrum of storage solutions. Folks like Folded Space and Laserox offer some great third-party solutions (I have some myself), but my plea here is to the publishers out there.

Firstly, to those of you who provide good inserts - thank you! Not only do they keep my bits and pieces neat and tidy, but I also take an almost perverse sense of satisfaction when everything goes back into its own little hidey-hole. But if you’re going to give us an insert, please give us printed instructions showing us how to use the damn thing.

Some games make it obvious. Jamaica for example. It’s one the oldest games I own which came with a custom insert for everything. The ships have their own little ship-shaped holes, there are three square shapes for the dice - it all makes sense. The same goes for Lords of Waterdeep. Stuff goes in the hole that’s the same shape as it.

Then we’ve got the opposite. Anyone who’s bought Bärenpark knows what I’m talking about. Some cardboard struts which divide the box into three, diagonally. There are no instructions as to what’s meant to go where. There are just three spaces in the box, and each is a different size. It’s a game full of tiles. What’s meant to go where?

I’ll leave the bad there. I’m not one to kick a bear while it’s down, and I love the game. What I want to talk about is the inserts that fit somewhere in between, which still seem to be included with new games, even now.

You know the situation: your new game has turned up, and you’ve torn the shrink off like a starving cardboardivore. Before that first play you’ve got to get it all punched-out and sorted, and that’s a really satisfying thing to do. Some people hate it, but I like it.

All of the chits and counters are sitting in the lid of the box (because you’ve done this sitting on the sofa while you’re watching TV, right?), and lo and behold - there’s an insert in the box! O’ frabjous day, callooh, callay! Except that when you try to put everything in the insert, you’ve no idea where it’s all meant to go. That’s okay, you can just check the sheet that came in the box which tells you… oh, there isn’t one.

So, you head off to BGG, find the game’s page, and search the forum for '‘insert’. If you’re lucky, you’ll find that you weren’t the only one struggling, and if you’re really lucky, some pictures or a video showing you what to do. Now that I think about it, it’s not a case of being really lucky, because it’s actually common practice now.

Some recent examples from my own recollection. Obsession (Kayenta Games) comes with some beautiful boxes to organise the came’s components, but no instructions for what’s intended to go where. Dan (the game’s designer) has videos on his Youtube channel showing how it all goes away, and links to them from the BGG forums.

Wayfarers of the South Tigris (Garphill Games) comes with a plastic insert, which was great to see. In the past Shem Phillips has released 3D printer files for his games once they’ve released, but this time around we get one in the box. I couldn’t figure out how the insert was meant to be used, and there’s no printed guide, so I headed off to the BGG forums and sure enough, there’s a thread called “Is there a pic/image somewhere showing what's supposed to go back into the game tray/insert?”, which then links to a video showing how to do it.

I know this is the very definition of a First World problem, but it’s no less frustrating. Part of the problem is with the proliferation of expansions for games, and games being released with the expansions not only in mind, but planned and almost certainly in the works. Wayfarers’ insert has spaces for extra tiles, which is great for housing future expansions, but also makes it confusing to put away for the first time.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal does the same thing. In its defence, however, the insert is fairly intuitive; there’s a space for each little gearstick and each car, along with a glut of slots to put decks of cards. It’s not obvious which decks are meant to go where, but it doesn’t really matter. Decks of cards are ubiquitous and inherently understood.

The other part of the problem - and this is only a guess - is when the designers have set up and packed the game away a hundred times before. They know what needs to go with what, which tiles go with which other tiles, and how the different decks of cards get split. When I open and sort a game for the first time, I have no idea which things live with which other things. Even if I read the rules, it’s still not always obvious what goes where in the insert. I feel stupid.

So if you’re reading this, publishers, designers, manufacturers - anyone at all involved in putting that insert in with that game, please give us a sheet which explains how to do it. Ultimate Railroads did it, and Distilled did it really recently. The cost of that A4 printed sheet really is worth it when it means you don’t have to answer the same question a hundred different times on BGG, or sit and record a Youtube video.

Have you got a favourite insert? What’s the most confusing insert you ever had? Have you ever had one worse than Bärenpark? Let me know. Join the Punchboard Discord, or come find me on Twitter - https://twitter.com/PunchboardUK