The Knife was $10 on US Amazon - even with the excess shipping getting it over there if you can't find it on a local equivalent it should be $25 tops I'd imagine. (It was actually mailed USPS here not even UPS/FedEx)
Even that would stretch my budget a little since I don't plan to make any more inserts in the forseeable future. Between Dead of Winter and Star Wars, and all the associated stuff I've chosen to buy for them on top, I've pretty much blown my board game budget for the year!
I will say that just having a new sharp box cutter made all the difference. the last one I used was pretty old, probably blunt and started to rust. So it was chewing up the foam every time I did a cut. The new knife, even though it's still a $2 cheapie, glides through like it's supposed to.
Well shit, now I totally want to get into that foamcore stuff. Just a couple nights ago I got Battlecon: Devastation of Indies and went "This looks like a fantastic game, with a terrible box.", which is true of probably 70-80% of my collection. Time to start a whole new craft? The idea is supper appealing to the perfectionist in me.
It definitely makes things nice and fit better. What I really like about it how much it can reduce setup / packup time, but having all the right things in the right place. First one I did was for suburbia, and having all the A, B, C tiles in seperate trays made it so much easier to pull them out, shuffle and put down than messing with baggies.
It's also relatively inexpensive, though can be time consuming. Just need a cutting mat, good knife, metal ruler and pva or craft glue. Then it's just a matter of buying the foamcore you want. I'd highly recommend getting the ones where the foam and cardboard are matching colours. I'd also recommend, pencil for drawing in your cutting lines first, and pins for holding it all together while the glue dries. Whatever the pins with the balls on the end are call are great since it also helps them sit off the surface during drying. It's also worth planning out carefully what you want to do. So easy to forget that the foam is 5mm which adds up if you have too many sides or slots. Also, some plans you can get online might not take into account if your cards are sleeved or not, which again, adds up and can throw things off just enough to ruin everything.
I was really hoping I could find a nice piece of software to do the designing in which would also then optimize how I should do the cuts. I usually end up with some many different shaped pieces for the various sides, bottoms, etc, it would be nice to reduce how much is wasted. Anyone seen anything like that?
Ghost Stories is really rough with 2 people - wife and I got it about 2 weeks ago, have yet to win a game in maybe 5 runs.
I really like Ghost Stories, but man it's a bitch. My group still struggles on Intro level, though starting get some consistent wins there. It's hard to imagine how the harder levels are possible though.