This past weekend saw the Pax East convention here in Boston, and the first full [and successful] test of my fleet storage and transport system bringing gear in to run several periods of X-Wing demo games in conjunction with Pandemonium Books & Games dealer booth.  I got a free badge to the convention for running the demos, and everyone who played in the demo games got a 20% coupon off X-Wing products at the Pandemonium booth.

Many X-Wing gamers choose to use Plano 5230 boxes for storage and transport.  Those work just fine if you’re carrying gear for one player.  When you’re carrying fleets for multiple player games, then larger fleet storage and transport solutions are required!

The big roll wrapped in the blue Star Wars fabric contains (4) 3′ x 3′ pieces of black glitter felt for star mats rolled around a 4′ long wooden dowel and all held in place with 2 small bungee cords.  The glitter felt came from Jo-Anns Fabrics.  Jo-Anns has it on 6′ wide bolts.  They stock it as Christmas seasonal material.  Other craft stores like Michaels and A.C.Moores stock it in large sheets year round.  Going to JoAnns to buy the felt, I was planning on buying some cheap muslin to use as a protective wrap.  But discovered the Star Wars print fabric in the clearance remnants and just had to geek out =^,^=

I also have on hand (2) 4′ x 6′ pieces of the glitter felt on a 5′ dowel to bring when running larger scenario games, but didn’t need those this weekend.

The small green camo bag is a Plano Tackle Bag that holds 4 Plano 3650 boxes from WalMart.  I’ve loaded each box with tokens and dice for 2 players.  There’s a single set of asteroids and movement templates, two damage decks, 8 attack dice, and 10 defense dice in each one.  Two players can easily share one set of movement templates.  I have additional sets that can be handed out if needed.  Cut a slot in the sidewall of the front center compartment to make room for the ‘5 Straight’ template to fit in the box.

The red duffel bag is from K-Mart and is large enough to carry an assortment of storage boxes.  There’s spare room to carry more boxes as the fleet expands.  For casual game nights when all 4 of the token storage boxes aren’t needed, I just put one or two of them in this bag with everything else.

The ship tokens, pilot cards, and upgrade cards all go into a Plano 3750.

The ships themselves go into Stack-On 17 Compartment boxes (with extra dividers to use all the available compartments).  $7 each at K-Mart.  And very convenient to grab a stack of them from the Hardware aisle and go to the Sporting Goods aisle to find the aforementioned red duffel that they fit in so nicely.

The larger compartments can be subdivided later with a strip of foam and have room to store 2 ships each to hold a few more future ships.  I also picked up a 3rd box which is slated to hold the custom Z-95’s and other ships for the Pirate fleet.  More boxes can also be acquired as needed…

Eventually, I will probably line the compartments of these with the craft foam used in the lunch box shown down below.

One large row in the Rebels’ box has been left open to hold the firing range templates and one of the plastic covers that fit over the ship models in the core box.  That plastic cover holds additional sets of movement templates.

The Star Wars lunch box from Old Navy currently holds the YT-1300 and two Firesprays.  It’s so great to have an excuse to geek out acquiring Star Wars merch  : 3

Got a sheet of craft foam from one of the craft stores.  Just cut it to shape and press-fit it into the box.  The rolled rims of the box hold the top, bottom, and side pieces in place.  Strips of the foam are just tucked in to provide dividers for the ships and supports to hold the parts tray.  Cut the parts tray down from the bottom of a core set box.  After doing a dry-fit, did the final scoring, folding, gluing, and taping to hold it all together.

I currently have 3 Firespray-31’s though, and will likely acquire a 2nd YT-1300 at some point.  And there are various large custom ships in the works.  So more storage will be required.  Already have a Boba Fett Helmet lunch box on hand which still needs to be fitted out to hold the 3 Firesprays and assorted other ships.  After that box is prepared for storage, this one will then carry the 2 YT’s.

The fleets unpacked!  For current acquisitions that did not come into the convention, there’s the 3rd Firespray and a 4th Y-Wing.

Pew, Pew, Pew — Luke S. takes fire from Night Beast!

Wedge A. and Darth V. setting their movement dials.

These are jsut a few of the new players introduced to the game at Pax — It was a great weekend with lots of great gamers!