Innovation Deluxe Card Racks

My first attempt at creating a laser cut box. This is for Innovation Deluxe, which is a great game but comes in a box with no way of organizing the five decks it contains. Most people just put the cards on the table in ten stacks, and if they play all four expansions, that’s 50 stacks of cards. And you need a fair amount of room for your own tableau as well. My solution makes the game take much less table space when played. It keeps the cards organized in the box, but still requires that the box be kept upright when transporting it.

Here is one of the five identical racks, without cards. Note that the first slot is wider because deck 1 has 15 cards, and the other nine have 10 cards.

rack without cards

With a deck of cards, this the base game, and the achievement cards. Note the divider at the bottom to keep them from sliding around.

rack with stored cards

Here is the full set of all cards, ready for play, with the achievements (and relics) in front.

full layout front

full layout side

Here is the box fully loaded. Note that my first attempt made the boxes a bit too wide, so my final plans are a bit narrower so they fit the box snuggly.

cards in box

Here they are as clamshells.

as clamshells

Design notes:

  • My tabs have a loose fit and needed to be glued. Broken Token boxes have a much tighter fit, and I did not attempt to fix my design to be tighter.
  • My cards are not sleeved. Sleeved cards would be thicker and this solution would need to be different. The slots would need to be much wider, and might even need to be at an angle other than 45°. I suspect half of the players will sleeve their cards.
  • In the game, players draw from the top of stacks and replace to the bottom of stacks. This works well, but the racks are narrow enough that they must be careful not to knock the stack sideways, particularly when there are fewer cards in the stack. Wider racks would fix this problem, but then the cards would not fit in snugly when stored, and the racks would not fit in the box. I did not consider this a serious enough problem to warrant a different solution.
  • I made the front and back of the rack the same, so an unobservant builder could turn one of the sides around. Maybe it would be better to change the ends so that someone could not make that mistake.
  • The racks are square. Do they need to be? Nah, but it’s aesthetically pleasing.

This is an SVG file with just one box on it. If I were to print another set for another game, I’d print five copies of it. I printed on 1/8″ plywood birch.