Storage

Now this depends a whole lot on your space. There are a lot of good storage solutions out there. The most common one you’ll hear about are the Kallax shelves form Ikea. That is the cubby shelf that I have in the background on my videos and you’ll see them around a lot. But they aren’t the only option. Growing up we had games stored in a trunk. People put them in a closet or in a book shelf.

Another common solution is basically bakery shelving for bread. This works well if you have a lot of games, a hard floor, and maybe a little less room than you’d like. It’d allow you to roll them around. The rolling around means that you could keep them packed up tighter to only have to roll them out at times. Like I said, a good situation if you have less room to keep more games available.

There is a reason why I do like them out of a closet. I have a few of them in the closet, but those are harder to see, that means that they’d get played less. I know I have a few games in my closet right now that I need to get played, and I even have a doors for the closet opened. But really, this article is about sorting, so let’s get to that.

How Do You Sort Your Board Games?

So, this is maybe a bigger question. For people, storage is often set with how your place is set-up, but sorting games is definitely it’s own animal. And there are a lot of different theories as to how to sort. Let’s run through a few of them.

By Color

This one is a little bit silly, but looks really cool. When you sort by color you get kind of a gradient that flows throughout your shelf. However, this is what I’d consider about the least useful way to sort your games. I think to actually use it you’d need to create an index book. So you’d need to create an alphabetical index to find where games are. That seems like unnecessary work.

By Size

This one doesn’t have a cool a look, but works well for some people who have to stack on shelves more. You want to put your larger stuff down lower so it’s both easier to get off the shelf and balance. This way again could use an index, but I remember the size of a game better than the color of the box. But with a Kallax shelf this doesn’t make as much sense. The cubbies allow you to store vertically or horizontally.

By Mechanics

This has been the one that I’ve kind of gone with, well this and the next one. But sorting by mechanic works pretty well because it gives you some flexibility for adding games. If there is room in the deck builder area, you don’t have to place it by a certain color, size, or letter. The downside is that some games use a number of mechanics. Dune: Imperium and Lost Ruins of Arnak are two examples of this. Those two games are deck building and worker placement. So which category do you put it in?

By Theme

Another way that I kind of do is by theme. So all the Lord of the Rings games in one area, all the Lovecraftian games in another. This is similar to the mechanics option, but depending on the type of gamer you are, this might work better. I tend to have a number of games for a given theme. So by theme works pretty well for me.

By Grouping/Expansion

This one is a bit like the previous two. But let’s think about it this way. Tainted Grail is an adventure game with a grim dark fantasy setting. I can fit all of it in a single Kallax cube. I don’t need it to be next to the other adventure games or the other grim dark games. Since it all fits by itself it goes in it’s own cube. Dice Throne doesn’t go next to King of Tokyo though the mechanics can be similar because I have a lot of Dice Throne, put it all together on a shelf. The downside is that you just kind of need to know.

By Alphabet

Finally, we have alphabetical. This one actually has some more issues than it might seem. Mainly that you need spaces around each letter. It ebbs and flows as I add and get rid of games what letter has the most games. So I’d need to keep a fair amount of space by most of the letters.

So What Will I Go With?

That’s the tough question. Probably some combination of, again, by mechanic, theme, and grouping. And even with that I’m going to then inventory where stuff are in terms of cubes. On Board Game Geek you can add in inventory notes, so I’ll make a system for determining which spot they are in. Why do it that way, because it requires the least adjustment over time. I can leave gaps where I want and create gaps as I sell and it doesn’t matter as much.

What is right for you though, that’s a good question that you’ll have to decide. I do think that theme or mechanic are really nice for giving you flexibility in how you leave space for a growing collection. It doesn’t have as much of a specific spot where to put stuff. You just have an area where the game needs to go.

But how do you sort? Are they just generally shoved into a closet or do you have a particular way?

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The Criteria

• Small/Portable
• Plays in 30 minutes or less
• Little to no set-up/tear down
• Easy to teach
• Small Footprint
• Plays well with few People

Small/Portable

There are some big games that do play fast or meet some of the other criteria, but let’s face it, you probably won’t be bringing in a Gloomhaven sized box, or have a spot to keep a Gloomhaven campaign set-up. If you do, you are lucky. So instead if a game is small and easy to take around, that is going to be the best way to go.

30 Minutes or Less

Game play needs to be fast. Even if you get an hour for lunch, you probably want to play something that is fast. A game that takes an hour, with teaching the rules, and other things can take longer. And you don’t want to have something that you can’t finish in that hour. Now, if you have a table in your work area, you can maybe leave something set-up, but otherwise, keep it snappy.

Minimal Set-up

This ties into that thirty minutes or less as well, Keep the game simple to set-up and take down. You don’t want to spend half your lunch setting up the game to rush through the game and be taking it down once lunch is over. So, instead, look for games that you can play basically right out of the box.

A Fast Teach

Rules are another big thing to think about. If I teach Gloomhaven, that’d probably take 15-20 minutes by itself. But there are games out there that you can teach really quickly. Pick those ones off of your shelf first. Or if the people you are playing with are up for it, teach them ahead of time via Watch It Played or some other rules video.

Small Footprint

You might think I already talked about this with a small game, but this different. A small footprint game is going to take up way less space on the table. Some of the Tiny Epic games come in a small box, but they take up a lot of table space. This one depends more on your work. some offices might afford you room at break room tables to play bigger games. I have played Power Grid and Dominion during lunch, not the smallest games. So know if it’ll work for you work.

Player Count

Some games scale well without adding times, some games do not. If you bring in Sushi Go Party, you can play with 8 people in the same time as two. Other games, however, you add in more players it increases the game time. Also find out if you play with analysis paralysis players, because that will make a difference in what you bring in, or what player counts you can do.

What Games Would Work?

Hanamikoji

This game is only a two player game, but you generally can knock out a game of it in 15 minutes. The actions are simple, set-up is fast, you could maybe even get in three games during an hour lunch. The biggest table hog part of it is the cards that are in the middle of the table, but generally pretty small and can be set-up and taught extremely fast.

Ohanami

This game is set-up right out of the box. And it is a drafting game, so that means from two players up to four players, the game goes about the same speed, which is as fast as the slowest player. Now, this does take up a bit more room, but you could condense the stacks so just see the high and low cards and then flip through scoring at the right time. But another really easy to teach.

Criss Cross

First of a few roll and write games on this list. Criss Cross is one where everyone goes at the same time, and that’s going to be a theme of all the roll and writes. It works well because the rules are fairly simple. The only tricky part of the teach is getting people to place the dice in pairs, so just really emphasize that.

Second Chance

Another roll and write game, this one again has everyone playing at once. So it can really scale as high as you want. Second Chance, to me, is supposed to be a relaxing game, so rushing to fit it into a half hour lunch with the teach and eating might make it seem a little bit fast, but once people know it, it’ll be easy to pull out.

Magic The Gathering

Now, this one breaks one of the rules for sure. Magic the Gathering is not easy to teach. So I wouldn’t recommend teaching it during a lunch period. But there are a lot of people who play Magic the Gathering. Instead of teaching it, hope the person knows it and has their own decks. A standard game of Magic with a 60 card deck and players knowledgeable in the game can make it go fast.

Cartographers

Back to roll and write games. The theme for them is that everyone goes at once. Cartographers is fun because for a roll and write, it offers more player interaction. I really like that about it. Teaching it can take a bit longer than the other two, but since it is map making, I feel like the teach can be a bit smoother as well. The game provides framework for what you are doing based off of the theme.

Sushi Go Party

I mentioned this one above, it works well and scales well. Since it’s a drafting game, the slowest person determines the speed of the game. And even in the players first game, people generally get faster as the game goes on. The one tricky thing is the combinations of scoring can change a lot. So to make it even simpler, consider just Sushi Go where you don’t have the card variability.

Dice Throne

This one would work better for a longer lunch because of the dice rolling. Now, there will be some people who don’t think this works because they have the big box of everything. So it isn’t a small box to take around. Open up your big box, take out two of the Game Trayz and take those. Or, I have all the duel boxes because I wanted to keep it portable. Probably for an hour lunch, but the dice rolling Yahtzee style makes it an easy one to teach.

Final Thoughts

Board games can be a good way to interact and get to know co-workers more as people. Out of a number of my jobs I have left with good friends who I still talk with. I know some people like to keep their personal life and work life separate, I don’t. I can get that mindset because sometimes people lose the business and professionalism over time. But I think being able to see your co-workers and people and friends can be helpful at times. And then be professional at other times.

I asked it at the beginning, but what board game would you bring in to play with this theoretical co-worker?

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