Room to swing a Nexu!:- Broken token Imperial Organizer

While attending UK Games Expo this weekend we only really had 1 purchasing goal in mind: to buy an insert for Dominion, a game which we currently have 2 expansions for and as such takes up 3 boxes on our shelf. After visiting Chaos Cards' stall we found the Broken Token storage trays and decided that the Dominion one wouldn’t do what we wanted. Ideally we want to reduce 3 boxes down to 1, I’d be happy if someone would tell me not to worry and that the insert can do this, but we just didn’t feel that was the case at the time. 

Over two hundred pounds later and one of the many things we ended up buying was the Broken Token Imperial Organizer for Imperial Assault- a game I’m yet to review, but given that I thought to buy a £30 storage solution for it, you can guess I’m a fan! This is going to be a picture heavy review so you can see the process. First up have a look at the finished product.

Everything fits in nicely, I had a mild panic about the larger map tiles, but the top tray has a groove in the center so they can fit nicely.

You’ll notice both AT-STs in there, the Imperial Organizer is designed to fit in it every miniature and component released up to and including Twin Shadows. Which as it happens is precisely what I own, the only figure I don’t think has a space is the Bantha Rider which I also picked up at the expo. There are 2 trays, each with 16 slots for regular minis and 1 slot for an E-web engineer. There is a separate tray with 2 slots for the Nexu, while the AT-STs stand proud outside the storage trays. This does mean that you’ll have to double up some minis if you have more than just the base game. The dividers in the storage trays are optional in case you have any bigger or more awkward figures you want to move about.

The separate trays are easy to slot out of the box, during a game you'll have the trays on the left of the box out to provide easy access to tokens etc

Honestly though I didn’t buy this because I needed miniature storage (though with us moving house in a matter of weeks this will be greatly appreciated). The reason I wanted this was as a token organizer. Imperial Assault is a fairly quick game, skirmishes can easily take ~45 minutes, but setting up can add an extra 30 mins to every game! There’s no way to completely prevent this of course, but Broken Token have a good solution, instead of the hundreds of baggies you have trays that can be taken out of the box and placed right on the table leaving all needed tokens and cards in easy reach.

In terms of storage, there is enough to fit everything I have, but not much more. The limiting factor is the larger cards that are used for troop selection etc. This tray was very full, but the tray for the smaller equipment cards and the like has space for plenty of expansion. Token wise there is enough space for everything you could need, though you might struggle a little if you bought an extra set of dice. There is storage for all the map tiles, allowing you to separate small corridor parts from small dead ends, then medium corridors get a separate tray from rooms and finally the largest rooms sit on top, with a slot cut into the wood to fit it.

The instructions include a legend for which part is which. They are simple enough to follow, building this felt a lot like making Ikea furniture.

In terms of build quality the insert is made of good quality light wood that’s been laser cut, and laser engraved. You won’t need any tools to put this together, though you might find that a craft knife and a spot of glue may help. There were two trays where I felt I needed to glue one corner together to help the fit. With one joint it was apparent that the laser cutter had stopped before properly cutting the hole so I had to do a tiny amount of cutting, though I’m sure this is a rare occurrence.

The whole system comes as flat packed laser-cut wood. It's easy to punch out and usually easy to put together.

The instructions are easy to follow, though building it is a little time consuming. Everything slots together, usually very smoothly, though on occasion you need more force than I would have liked. One thing worth pointing out is many of the components look symmetrical at first, but actually aren’t, if you are really struggling then try flipping the piece round 180 degrees and you might find it slots in like a glove.

I think I spy a problem here, I had to break apart this whole section, turn all the dividers round and put it back together. Yes I'd managed to make all the dividers the wrong way round, I'm talented like that!

The only other flaw I have to point out is that a couple of parts on my sheets had some kind of slight imprint from what looked to be another component. This seemed apparent while building but I can’t say I notice it now it’s all together. All things considered this is a quality product which will be extremely useful for speeding up your Imperial Assault setup time as well as making it look nicer. It’s a shame that it hasn’t future proofed me for any expansion past the first (and all ally/villain packs), but if you are getting multiple expansions for a game you might expect to use more than one box.