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- Verified Buyer
This organizer is a must-have for Gloomhaven, and there's no question about it. If you're looking at this organizer wondering if you should get this, you definitely should. While there are other organizers on the market, this one ships with Amazon prime and is easily one of the top two organizers out there.While I think this one is the best, there's another by go7gaming that is tied with this one. The go7gaming one has individual wooden boxes for all of the characters, but they're not labeled, so you'd have to go out of your way to get stickers to put on them or write on them or whatever. Plus, if you haven't unlocked those new classes yet, you're going to end up spoiling it when you open them to put in those wooden boxes.But I digress, this review is supposed to be about the Broken Token organizer, so without further distractions...I didn't have any issues punching out any of the pieces, they were all cut very well, though I learned that you shouldn't just "punch" the pieces out. Instead, you should "twist" or "rotate' the pieces until they come out on their own. If you punch them out, you risk splintering the parts, which I did on two or three of them, and I used some wood filler (Elmer's E887Q Stainable Wood Filler) to patch it up. That was my own mistake, though, and once I realized how you should be removing pieces (perhaps an X-Acto knife would have helped here), getting them all out was a breeze. Granted, a few pieces were a bit stubborn, but I was patient with them, and they worked out just fine.It's also helpful to have some sandpaper nearby (200 grit), not that any of the joints wouldn't connect because they were too big, but whenever I'd get a piece out, I would sand the bits that had held them into the wood sheets to flatten them out and make them smooth. I'm sorry I do a terrible job of describing that, but the edges I sanded down to make them smooth. I also used the sandpaper for smoothing out some of the flat sides that looked like they had some splinters sticking out, which should be expected with a wood project like this one (be a bit careful and look over the pieces, so you don't get a splinter).Now, there's a LOT of discussion about how to glue everything together... Some people will only use glue on joints that need it, others have complained about their glue leaving a mess all over, others have complained about their glue looking ugly on the wood when it leaks out of the seams, so on and so forth. So I thought I'd leave some advice for gluing it myself to avoid those issues and to get your boxes looking as pretty as possible:- I used glue on every piece that connected (except for the dividers that go in the card separator boxes). Essentially, if two separate pieces of wood were going to be touching, I used glue on them to hold them in place in that spot, even if it wasn't explicitly a connected joint. The result was a very stable set of containers :p- You don't need to use a lot of glue. I squirted out a bit of glue on a paper plate and used a fine paintbrush to patiently apply tiny streaks of wood glue on any space where two pieces of wood would touch.- Again, less is more here. You don't want puddles of glue shooting out of the joints when you press them together, and using a small amount will dry faster. I mean, there were times where it looked like I didn't use any glue whatsoever. The amount was -that- thin. Have faith in your glue :p- Finally, I used Gorilla Wood Glue that sells for about $3 here on Amazon. One bottle is plenty to get this project done. It dries fast, it was easy to work with, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is wondering what glue is best for this thing.In total, it took me about 12 hours to build this thing. BUT, that's because I was taking my time with every individual piece and methodically going over everything because I wanted to. Also, I'm confined to a bed because of a medical problem that describing is outside of the scope of this review. I am giving myself a huge pat on the back for being able to build this thing while stuck in bed, unable to walk, haha. I'm sure if I had more freedom of movement, I could have put this together in more like 4 or 5 hours.I only mention this because if you're wondering about the difficulty, if I can build it from what is essentially a hospital bed, you can 100% build it on a table, I have faith in you :)I liked building it so much that I'm even considering offering to build it for others on Etsy or something. It was a joy, but I love working with my hands on projects like this. If you're not a fan of building things, have a friend or relative who does enjoy it help out.The bottom line on constructing it:- Take your time building it, and patience is key here.- Use glue conservatively, use a small paintbrush or toothpick to apply it in small amounts.- Twist the pieces out, don't punch them out or you risk splintering them. An X-Acto knife would probably help out, but I didn't use one.- Have a 200 grit sandpaper nearby if you're pedantic about smoothing all the edges to make it looks as lovely as possible. Also, it will help you to remove any potential splinters you see in the wood.- Finally, try to have fun while building it! What you get out of the result is directly correlated to how you treat building it ^_^No Gloomhaven organizer is perfect, all of them have pain points, but this one shines because it doesn't share the same problems that most of the organizers have, so I suppose I should list some pros and cons.Pros:- This one is labeled; many other organizers don't have labels.- It has containers for every single piece (except 4, which I'll explain in the cons section below)- All of the containers fit together nicely in the box- It's a joy to build (this one may be debatable if you don't like building things though)- It supports the Gloomhaven expansion set.- It will cut down your Gloomhaven setup time considerably, I mean you hear stories about people who spend an hour or more setting up the game. With this set, that's more like 10 or 15 minutes. It's that good.- The instructions are unambiguous and easy to follow; we're not talking about building a wooden clock here; it's super easy to assemble.- It looks gorgeous :pCons:I've only found one downside. I'm sure others will have their complaints, but...This organizer assumes that you have four active players/characters going on. This means that at any point in time, there will be 4 class boxes that you can't fit into the Gloomhaven box. The organizer wants you to use the character/player trays (of which there are four) and to collapse the boxes to pile on top.I don't like collapsing those boxes, though, so instead, I opted for the other workaround, which is just to put four class boxes on top of everything once the organizers have been assembled into the main box. It means that your Gloomhaven box won't shut all the way, but I'm not so picky about that particular thing.For the beauty that this organizer is, and for all of the benefits it provides to your gameplay, I think that's a pretty insignificant price to pay :-)To summarize, if you're a Gloomhaven vet, you've either already figured out your organization strategy, or you're looking at this one about to pull the trigger on it, and you absolutely should.If you're a new Gloomhaven player, perhaps you got it as a gift for Christmas, or you took the leap and bought it, this is an essential accessory for the game. If you haven't opened your Gloomhaven game yet (by that, I mean, if you haven't already started taking everything out and punching out pieces), you definitely should purchase this and build it first. It will make that whole unpacking experience so much sweeter and smoother.
