I designed a 3D printed photo caddy insert for Tiny Epic Galaxies

Last week, I added Tiny Epic Galaxies to my tabletop games collection. I’ve been enjoying the game for a long time but never owned a copy until now.

The game comes in a nice small box but as is usual for retail board games, the boxes are just a bottom and a cover and my experience with those is that they tend to open on their own in the bag, spilling all of the pieces around in my bag.

Starting point

First, I printed an insert that fits the original box as I found a nice looking one. However, after the first evening of carrying the game, I noticed the tokens had flown all around inside the box.

It wasn’t very easy to get tokens in and out of the tight spaces without turning the entire box upside down. I think it’s still a nice insert especially if you want to use the original box.

My own insert

When I got home, I decided to design my own insert that would fit a photo caddy box. I purchased a carrying case with 16 such boxes a while back and have been putting my small games in them to build a collection where it’s easy to pick them up and go. Some examples are in an earlier blog post.

I took a lot of inspiration from aforementioned insert by The Cyberpunk Raven, splitting the insert into cards holder, dice section and space for tokens.

I made two options for holding the tokens:

In the first option, you can print 5 smaller containers, one per each player. These slot into the token space, can be taken out to distribute to players (easier to empty by turning upside down) and then put back after finishing games.

The other option uses TuTu’s Mini Pocket Slide Boxes (9cm x 5cm version) if you don’t want to have individual containers for pieces.

I actually started with the latter solution but then decided to also make individual containers when I decided to post my model into Printables.

The model

I’ve posted the model into Printables if you want to print one for yourself. I’m happy to receive feedback but can’t make any promises for improvements as my modeling skills are rather limited. It’s published with a permissive license (CC BY-SA 4.0) though so if you’re able to make your own changes, I encourage remixing and sharing. The only requirements in the license are to attribute to the original model and to maintain the same license with remixes.

Putting the original case into good use

Since the original case is still good and valid, I use it to store these player mat overlays by Sherri. I won’t take them with me as I travel but they are a nice premium when playing at home to avoid the pieces from moving around on the playmat.

The original designer explains the need very well:

I created this print because the popular board game, “Tiny Epic Galaxies” player mat/playing pieces have a very low friction coefficient. During game play it is common for the pieces to slide from their proper position into an adjacent space requiring the player's constant attention and detracting from the game play experience. In order to prevent this accidental movement I created an overly that the player mat is inserted into without destroying the card or harming the mat in any way.

They are quite thick: 5 overlays take up the entire original box.