StarCraft the board game case

3D model description

As a big fan of the original Blizzard game, I bought the StarCraft board game many years ago. While everything was fun, the original cardboard box was not ideal. Inside the box were tokens, cards, and plastic figures for each of the six players, along with common tokens and cards, cardboard palettes, and a rule book. However, the enormous box was only half full (big box to justify the game's price) and had no organizers inside. To keep things in order I organized them into dozens of plastic bags.

Eventually, I came up with an idea to make the game components more manageable and reduce the box's size. After two years of designing, trying, printing, and reprinting, I finally achieved my goal.

The design I came up with features a separate box for each player, which holds all of their components in an organized manner. The removable token pallet is also included, making it easier to avoid a mess of tokens during gameplay. Additionally, the bottom of the case serves as an organizer for all of the common parts. There's even a gap under the lid that can store cardboard palettes, info sheets, and a rule book.

Overall, the design offers a more compact and user-friendly solution to organizing the StarCraft board game, making it easier and more enjoyable to play.

Disclaimer

This project is difficult to build, I spent some extra material to get things done right. All I can promise that I've printed it myself using the models I've provided.

Boxes parts nicely work with each other and my game. I'm not completely sure that other instances of the game uses exact the same materials for cards and tokens. It may result into different token stack thickness and some sells may be too tight or too loose. However if you gonna do it contact me for advises or small cell size modifications. I recommend to print cell perimeters first to check the sizes before you spend lots of plastic and time for the whole.

3D printing settings

Dimensions

The main case

• height: 146mm + logo (approx 5mm)

• length: 384mm + hinges (approx 2×9.2mm)

• depth: 232mm + latches (approx 2×17mm) Vertical walls and upper lid are 5mm thick. Bottom is 35mm thick, it also serves as a token palette for all common stuff.

A player box

height: 96mm (including lid)
width (along case's length): 62mm
length (along case's depth): 220mm

Printing and assembly

Everything is printed with 0.4 nozzle, with no supports and almost everything with 0.2 layer.
Also used a textured bed cover for nice looking surface (all the lids are being printed upside down)

Fasteners needed:
- 3 M6x20 SHCS (case bottom assembly)
- 3 M6 heat-insert nuts (case bottom assembly)
- 16 M3x6 FHCS (latches mount)
- 16 M3 heat-insert nuts (latches mount)
- 4 M3x40 SHCS (lid hinge axes)

Player boxes

Each player box consists of three parts: individual lid with a logo, race-specific token palette in the middle and a race-specific box for cards and units.
Walls are thin, so will be covered by perimeters. The infill for token palette can be relatively small, I used 13% gyroid.
Lid is kept on the box with 8 small 3×2 round magnets, so you will need 48 of them in total. I'm not a fan of glue so magnet holes doesn't have any clearance. Magnets should be carefully pressed into with a vice.

The main case

Case's length is almost 400mm, most probably too big for the majority of home printers. So I've designed it to print in half for future assembly. Bottom will be held by three M6×20 socket head bolts and corresponding heat-insert nuts. It has indexing shapes near bolts and along vertical walls to make the alignment simpler.
Case parts are big and tall, they tend to unstick from the bed. Do your best for bed adhesion. Wash it, level, calibrate Z-offset and EM.
Case is printed with 4 perimeters 5 top/bottom solid layers and 23% infill. Here you can find your own balance between case weight, plastic usage, printing time and case strength.
Bottom of the case actually doesn't need so much infill so first 35mm I've printed with 5.5% infill. Pay attention to the adding anchored dense layers to avoid artifacts within bottoms of inner shells. In SuperSlicer important settings are:
- Supporting dense layer: enabled, algorithm: Automatic unless full
- Anchor solid infill by X mm: 5mm
Check out "well anchored" image VS "in-air dense layer" that I've got with default settings. It rolls upwards, solids until next layer and crashes everything.

The logo

Logo is the only place where I used thinner layers: 0.05 for everything higher than 5mm -- to make the visible part smoother. Also the letter C from "Craft" has quite a gentle slope, so it's better to print it with 100% infill or more perimeters to avoid holes on the top surface.
Logo model has no clearance. The reason for that are long sharp corners, e.g. in letter B in "board". Offsetting sharp corners will result into a quite noticeable hole at the corner point. So it's much better to print the original size and then sharpen the corner with a sanding paper. Actually only several small letters needs it.
Than letters can be pressed into the lid. It would be nice to press them with a vice, but lid is to big. So I've put it upside up onto a big flat wooden bar and used a small hammer through a soft piece of wood. Do not hammer the plastic parts!
The tricky O letter The O letter from "board" has a hole. So the corresponding lid part is not attached to the lid. I've added small built-in supports to print together. Remove the inner part, clear supports, press it into the O-letter and then press them together to the lid.

Hinges

Hinges are simple. They are being printed integrated with a box. You will need four M3x40 socket head bolts as axes. Screwed directly into plastic, do not over-tighten. Check that lid parts move freely.

Latches

I haven't designed the latch myself. I've found one that suites very well, but I can't attach STL as a subject of my commercial project. This toggle latch by syzguru11 perfectly fits. The only modification you need is to split upper part into two -- one for each halves of the lid.
Latch is being mounted with M3x6 flat head screws and corresponding heat-insert nuts. Latch mount plate is attached to photos. But holes are printed vertically, nuts are inserted not ideally. Most probably it's worth print several versions of the latch with slightly different holes position to find a ideal. Bottom part should slightly press the walls together and closed latch should slightly press the lid. I've printed several until get the right tension.