RogerBW's Blog

The Box of Splendor and the Cosmic Pot 25 December 2016

I continue to design boardgame accessories for 3D printing; these two are for Splendor and Cosmic Encounter. Images are cc-by-sa by RogerBW unless otherwise specified.

Splendor is a great game, but its box is far too large for the bits you get: it's full of empty space, and the chips in particular tend to get loose when the box is tilted. (Image by Daniel Thurot on BoardGameGeek, cc-by-sa.)

I spotted a design on Thingiverse which seemed promising, but when I measured the details it looked very prone to rattling. So mine is sized to be a close fit for the chips, with U-shaped trays for them to sit in, one of them shorter than the other.

The noble tiles, and cards, go on the other side, with "shoulders" to support the cards.

The lid is rather simpler, but since I had all that space, I thought I might as well put in a reminder of the setup rules.

The end result is less than a quarter of the volume of the original. The lid fits reasonably closely, though one could hold it on with a rubber band if needed. The rulebooks don't fit, but there are reference sheets on boardgamegeek which can be folded in.

And then there's Cosmic Encounter, for which there's a standard set of player pieces in each colour (five planet discs, 20 ships, one score marker, one "special ship" marker). Wouldn't it be nice to store them all together?

Rather than mess with hinged lids that could come loose, I decided to go with a screw-top jar, using a screw library I also found on Thingiverse (learning to get the desired results out of it was something of a challenge). The pot is just wide enough to let the planets fit loosely, and short enough that two of them can be stacked in the box. The lid is lightly carved, to make it obvious which way up the pot is, and to make it easier to grip. (I have since designed an improved version with diamond-pattern knurling, but not yet committed it to print.)

This isn't quite as space-efficient as having stacks of all the planets and plastic bags for the other pieces, since the wall of the pot takes up a non-trivial amount of space, but everything still fits in the box, and I have reasonably good approximations for seven of the eight player colours (a pity about the purple, but there you go; that'll have to wait until I'm in a position to make my own filament, which given the cost of an extruder may be quite a while yet).

If you fancy copies of these, I will make them and sell them to you. See Shapes in the Flame.

[Buy Splendor at Amazon] [Buy Cosmic Encounter at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]


  1. Posted by Owen Smith at 12:22am on 26 December 2016

    I understand the sentiment but I can never bring myself to throw original boxes away. It's not complete without the original box.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 09:21am on 26 December 2016

    You could put a Box of Splendor in the original Splendor box and just use it as an organiser to stop the bits from getting loose. And fit in a bunch of other small games too.

  3. Posted by Owen Smith at 12:01pm on 26 December 2016

    That would require throwing the plastic insert away, which again I'd be loathe to do.

  4. Posted by RogerBW at 08:09pm on 26 December 2016

    When a game grows expansions, the insert is the first thing to go. (Even if I haven't designed and printed my own by that point.)

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