X-Wing Storage Solutions

No ships were harmed in the making of the above photo – or the subsequent house moves using this method of transport storage.

How to store the many, many X-Wing components is a question that comes up fairly frequently. There are endless ways to do it, with no correct solution. Here’s how I do it.

Will also address some other methods and possibilities, whilst making a deliberate effort to not turn this into an advertisement.* Ask me for specifics if you want to know more about something, happy to recommend stuff, just didn’t want this to be a giant ad.

*If anyone wants to send me free stuff, I would gladly review it

Ships

Starting at the top of the shelf with the models themselves.

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They mostly fit into two large compartmentalized boxes, with the Ghost and Hound’s Tooth in a further separate box because they are too darn big. The ships are in reality pretty sturdy, not especially prone to breakage, so storing them on top of each other like this is more than fine. Not perfect for rough transportation, some strong shaking of the box may well cause some issues, but for normal use its good.

In regards to ships breaking, I’ve found the peg connector on the underside of the ship to be the weakest link. In 4+ years playing, (approximate numbers from memory) I’ve had 4 peg connectors break, an E-Wing gun break (though that E-Wing saw an awful lot of use, so not too surprising) and a previously repaired Scurrg gun rebreak (already a weak point, so not completely my fault). And broken peg connectors are from clumsy things like knocking ships on the floor. Models are quite sturdy, don’t need the feather bed treatment.

Before boxing my ships, they all used to live on their bases, on a shelf, on display. That looked cool, and was super convenient for playing games at home, but less handy for moving all ships from one location to another (hence featured photo), and with an ever growing collection became rapidly less practical.

Other solutions tend to revolve around individually packing ships, with specialized foam storage, or little boxes (either made from cardstock or 3D printed). All seem to work good, just depends on how much time, money and/or space you are willing to put into it.

Cardboard – Dials and Bases

So many, many, many, dials and baseplates. I found some more neat compartmentalized boxes (nice and cheap) for storing all these pieces.

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Separated by faction, Rebels and Empire in one box, Scum, First Order, Republic and Separatists in the other. There’s a little bit of room for inevitable expansion (and also have a 3rd matching box currently filled with extra plastic bases, that could easily be emptied).

No Resistance … yet? I mean probably going to happen. For upcoming Wave 4, the Resistance expansion is the most intriguing to me, (probably) cheap coordinate with the Transport, or C-3PO crewing the Pod (though Squad Leader I1 Blue Sq. Recruit A-Wing for 36 points also seemed good in theory, never got around to trying it.)

You might notice the lack of assembled dials. I haven’t assembled a 2nd edition dial, partially due to hangover from 1st edition and the different dial orientation for maneuver setting (hardly a real reason, only a little bit of getting used to). But where did the natural wear and tear happen on first edition dials…

That’s right. On the outside. Where the maneuvers are on the 2nd edition dials. Feels like a design flaw. (Finding pictures was harder than anticipated, but anyone who’s been around a while knows what I’m talking about. Backs of dials becoming more white than any other colour)
Or maybe I’m crazy. Whatever, I’m happy using the Dial Upgrades, and assembling/disassembling for new squads. Maybe saves some space, maybe it doesn’t.

I’ve also taken to writing the names of the ship on the back of the dials (bigger so you can see it, and a longer name, not just 2/3 letters) to make finding the right ones easier.

And with the newer prequel factions I started colour coding the edges of these cardboard pieces to match the colour back of the dial with permanent markers. I had been slowly doing the previous factions in black as I played with them (because brown/grey cardboard edges ugly), and colour coordinating the new ones helps distinguish them in the box.

The main other method I’ve seen/heard of these (not just shoving them in a box of some sort) is in folders/folder pages. There are coin collecting folders that come in appropriate sizes for dials or baseplates, as well as some specialized to X-Wing storage folder pages out there.

Cards

My cards live in boring, cheap, white cardboard boxes from the local card game store, and sleeved in the FFG recommended sleeves. Have space for more cards, or could easily just get another box. The dividers are invaluable, and mine are recycled from Destiny boosters, though almost anything can do the job. There are shinier divider options out there, nicely printed with logos or even 3D printed, but seems overkill for storage. Alt Art cards are in a separate folder.

Within each Upgrade type, the cards are sorted alphabetically and Pilot cards for each faction are sorted by ship size, then ship type, then Initiative level. I could do more dividers for each ship type, but then likely too many dividers and becomes unwieldy.

There is also a box of extra cards, because there’s no way I need all 17 copies of Intimidation on hand. Only have 3-4 (or more depending on how many I think I might ever need at once) of each card in the main boxes, then the rest end up unsleeved in the extras box, likely never to be used.

Another common solution is folders. I used to store my cards in folders for 1st edition, but as much as I sometimes enjoyed organising cards in folders (found it strangely relaxing), there was simply getting to be too many cards, and with 2nd edition doubling the size of upgrade cards, I made a change. Folders is fine, good for finding cards quickly, but can be space consuming, and time consuming when there are new cards to slot in.

Tournament/travel kit

How one stores their stuff to take to a tournament or a game night is also something worth addressing. Need to have everything you need for 1, 2 or maybe 3 squads, while being comfortably portable.

For me, I have 3 things when taking my X-Wing somewhere:

• Template holder – beautiful wooden one, with felt and magnets. Holds a full set of templates, range 1-3 rulers, and has space for all the tokens (depending how organised I am) for the current squad + an extra range 1 ruler, some extra 1 straights and a ship marker or 2. Has a lid, not too big.
• Plastic box – again compartmentalized. Ships, bases, cards, dials, obstacles all go in here. Dividers are removable if necessary for larger ships. Can easily fit a squad or 2 in this and can also expand it by clipping an extra layer on the bottom. During events, box can live in a backpack, and put stuff on top of the tray or in the giant dice bag between rounds.

• Giant “Muh Dice!” dice bag – filled with dice, never have to roll the same blank twice. Filled with lots of useful stuff, and not having a hard case makes it easier to fit into a larger bag/backpack. From left to right in above photo: Damage decks (cool alt art one, and then requisite official one), smaller dice bag with actual dice, another smaller dice bag with all the extra tokens I might ever need, a set of ID/Arc/Lock tokens, extra pegs and some custom cards & tokens to trade/give away. So if you ever see me at an event, I will likely have some fun stuff to give you

Other ways include foam based transportation, and you can’t go wrong with a good ol’ core set box for holding everything (or even an ice-cream container). All kinds of different compartmentalized plastic boxes, often fishing tackle boxes. Smaller boxes for tokens with each type of token separated apart are also useful, and something I have used in the past.

Other Stuff

There is of course yet more stuff, that doesn’t quite fit into ships, dials, baseplates or cards categories and still needs storing. I have a general box, in the same style as the dials/baseplates boxes, except with a large open space underneath the compartment tray.

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In this box I have the rest of my extra pegs, unwieldy oversize promo damage deck, full set of obstacles (both meme gas clouds and unaltered gas clouds), few oversize tokens, all the devices/rigged cargo chutes and bases with grip pads. Underneath the tray is extra range rulers and templates, some more bases (there’s another big box of bases elsewhere) and more base grip pads as they’re new for me and I’m attaching them as needed.

Can use pretty much use whatever you want to store these extra bits and bobs, and depends on many you have.

Mats

Mats are pretty easy to store, (unless you have a lot of them, which I imagine would get trickier). My two are in a mat-bag designed for 3×3 mats, but the original FFG box is perfectly good for keeping the one mat in, or there are plenty of other tubes and cases that can be used.

Epic/1st Edition

Again, cheap, plastic, big boxes, no compartments this time. Everything is kind of just shoved in there, because I’m very rarely going to touch this stuff.

I think I only played 3 or 4 1st edition Epic games, and didn’t even use the Epic ships in all of those. Combining collections for dumb stuff like 6 K-Wings against 4 Shadow Casters. I’m just a sucker (like a lot of players) for the cards, needed to buy the big expansions for a couple cards, R3-A2, Palpatine, Inaldra…

Conclusion

This is just what I do, do what you want. Also accept that the storage is never complete, but always evolving with new content.

And there is stuff everywhere, tokens, or bases or rulers, or alt arts. Everywhere. Just everywhere.

Here’s another dank solution from reddit. 3D printed mounts that hold dials, pilot cards, and bases for that ship. Very cool, probably not everyone, but very cool.

-Nathan

Poor quality feature photo because I wasn’t thinking about publishing it online when I took it over a year ago. It gets the idea across pretty clearly though, which was the point.