I have a giant box with all my smaller A&A games in their boxes. It’s almost too heavy to lift! haha
Takes up like an entire shelf in the closet. The boxes alone command a fair bit of space in cubic footage, just to store in your home as an enthusiast. Like it’s a lot to lug around too lol.
If the map board itself was broken into rigid sections, then these could be stored in something like a flat folder rather than a giant box. I don’t know some kind of decorative mission dossier looking thing.
With a slimmer attack profile than a box that’s like 4 inches tall but really beefy in the width/length. Envisioned more as a long haul map protector, flip display maybe. The kind of thing you can get with the bigger initial purchase, but then when newer maps are released they can just sell those as stand alone products that ship separate and slip into the collector’s case once they’re at home.
Instead of a folding map or a rolling mat, you’d get a series of rigid panels, say A3 but you lay them together. Basically aiming for something that doesn’t fold but stacks. Then the weight/sizing would be similar to a book rather than a board game box, and you could embellish it more in that way. Sturdier materials for the panels, or a standard slip protector that just comes with the thing initially. Perhaps doing prints on the obverse too so that each panel can do double duty. As collectors you’d be collecting the maps separately and treating them more like comic books or something I guess. Separate from the units for any expansion campaigns, so the cost isn’t too high there.
Instead of the expense going way up when you get more into the hobby and more advanced in the rules, the purchases would be more constant price, since it’d basically just be updated for the latest manual and map panels. The latter could also have display appeal probably. You know, like you have one box for your units like a cool themed kit box or wooden-looking crate to house the sculpts and dice, then a folder that holds the maps (or any future maps) with some room to spare. Doing this you could issue maps, and not necessarily need new editions or rules for those maps, it could just be like cosmetic updates and new looks periodically, switching the style to service different aesthetics.
Of course pushing out new maps with different connections as you scale up would be a lot of fun, and easier to pull off that too. I still think your starter box needs to have the basics, and be at a price point that’s sensible. If Zombies is 30 bucks at a big box store, then I guess that’s our entry level. If there’s a big scale up (advanced set with more sculpts) that costs another 30 bucks, but isn’t just duplicating what’s in box 1, that makes sense to me. As you push out into tactical boards and combo advanced maps like a G40, they could probably just sell the maps alone keep the price point reasonable and go for more collector appeal with that.
I don’t know seems like it might work. The boxes for these games are quite large right now. The 1940 boxes are large and in charge no doubt, and the giant AA50 I have sitting on it’s side on top a bookshelf cause it’s the only place I could fit the thing in my apartment. It would be really nice if these games could somehow rest conveniently on a regular bookcase, within a more standard sized shelf. AA50’s map panels would only be what like 8x10 inches if they were separated rather than folded? The box by comparison is pretty massive, in terms of the length I mean. And you know that last mile they’re sticking it in an even larger box to ship, just to keep the edges from denting heheh.
Something much taller but more compact in the length, taking up more space vertically but not as long/wide would be ideal. That would be a nice upgrade to how these things are sold. Nobody would want to discard a box to a game once they have it, but if it didn’t need a box to begin with, or only 1 box, that might pretty cool.
I imagine it looking more like a multi volume book collection or a fancy Encyclopedia when the maps are stacked all together on the shelf. They’d ship/present more like books than half a dozen larger board game boxes, if that makes sense. But then you open them and have the panels ready to rock.
Rigid Panels are better than folding cardboard or mats in my view, if only because they make it way easier to move the game once it’s set. Like if you have to carry the thing to another room or whatever. Otherwise you need a much larger rigid backing or have to lift the whole table lol. Rigid map panels could also stack on top of each other with pylons at the corners, so that the game can be stored while still set more easily. The pylons you’d keep in your unit box with all the rest of the kit. The manuals and maps would be in the slimmer book/dossiers type format, so you could keep 'em together all neatly in a row.
