Gloomhaven Organization Guide: Storage Solutions That Work

You’ve just spent two hours setting up Gloomhaven. Monster standees scattered across three different bags, map tiles buried under a pile of ability cards, and someone’s character sheet wedged under the insert that gave up long ago. By the time you’re actually playing, half the table is already tired.

Gloomhaven’s component list is staggering — 17 playable classes, hundreds of enemy ability cards, over 150 map tiles, thousands of tokens, and a campaign system that expects you to pick up exactly where you left off. The base box insert is famously useless for anyone playing more than a session or two. What you need isn’t a fancy solution — it’s a reliable one that makes setup take minutes instead of an hour.

This guide covers the three main approaches: budget-friendly Plano-box systems, DIY cardboard organizers, and 3D-printed inserts for those who want a custom fit. There’s also a section on hybrid builds, because the best real-world solution for most players combines two or three of these methods.

The Core Problem With Gloomhaven Storage

Before picking a storage method, it helps to understand what you’re actually solving for. Gloomhaven has three distinct organization challenges that don’t always get addressed together.

Setup speed is the most obvious one. If finding the right monsters, pulling their stat cards, sorting their tokens, and laying out the map takes 45 minutes, you’ll play less often. Good storage should let you prep a scenario in 10–15 minutes, even for new scenarios.

Mid-session access matters too. You need quick access to overlay tiles, status tokens, and the attack modifier deck during play. Things that get touched constantly need to live somewhere accessible, not buried under components you won’t need until scenario three.

Long-term campaign tracking is where most casual solutions fall apart. Gloomhaven is a campaign game. Retired characters, unlocked classes, completed scenarios — all of it needs to stay organized between sessions. A solution that works for session one needs to still work for session forty.

Why the Default Insert Fails

The original insert is a single foam tray that holds the rulebook and loosely separates a few component categories. It doesn’t bag anything, doesn’t label anything, and doesn’t account for card sleeves. Once you start sleeving cards — which most players do fairly quickly — the insert becomes unusable almost immediately. Most experienced Gloomhaven players remove it entirely within a few sessions.

The YASS / Plano-Box Approach

The most widely used budget solution in the Gloomhaven community is the YASS (Yet Another Storage Solution) method, originally documented on BoardGameGeek and popularized through community videos. The core idea is simple: replace the foam insert with Plano tackle boxes, zip-lock bags, and printable lid legends.

What You Need

A standard YASS setup uses Plano 3600 or 3601 tackle boxes — the kind sold in fishing supply sections for a few pounds each. You’ll want several: typically one for monster tokens and stat cards, one for map tiles, one for character ability cards and personal quest decks, and a smaller container for the frequently-used setup components like road and city event decks.

The printed lid legends are what make this system genuinely functional rather than just a pile of boxes. Each box lid gets a printed insert that maps out exactly where each component lives. You can find community-made templates on BoardGameGeek or create your own in a basic design tool. This is the difference between “sort of organized” and “I can find anything in 30 seconds.”

Total cost typically runs £25–40 depending on how many boxes you buy and whether you use zip-lock bags or small mesh pouches for tokens.

What Works Well

YASS is genuinely excellent for most players. It’s cheap, easy to modify as your campaign progresses, and doesn’t require any special tools. When a new class gets unlocked, you add a bag and a new label. When you retire a character, their components get set aside cleanly. The system scales with the campaign in a way that rigid inserts can’t.

The main limitation is table space. During play, you’ll have two or three open Plano boxes sitting next to the board, which takes up room. If you’re playing on a smaller table, this can become cramped — especially with four players.

DIY Cardboard and Repurposed Containers

If you want to spend less than a Plano setup, or you enjoy the building side of things, a cardboard-based approach is surprisingly effective. The Chattering Horde and similar community blogs have documented versions of this that use a mix of small boxes, pill organizers, and drawer dividers sourced from discount shops.

The Basic Approach

The logic mirrors YASS, but uses whatever compartmentalized containers you can find cheaply. Pill boxes are excellent for status tokens because the individual compartments keep them separated without sorting every session. Small craft boxes work well for coin denominations. Shallow drawer organizer trays — the kind meant for kitchen utensils — can hold map tiles sorted by terrain type.

Labelling is even more important here than with Plano boxes, because the containers themselves are less standardized. Spend an hour with a label maker or even just a marker, and the whole system becomes much more intuitive.

The file-folder map tile method is one of the more clever adaptations in this category. Map tiles are stored standing upright in labeled dividers, similar to a filing system, which makes pulling specific terrain shapes much faster than digging through a flat pile. This works particularly well with cardboard folders from a stationery shop.

Cost and Trade-offs

A well-built cardboard and repurposed-container system can cost under £15 if you’re willing to spend time sourcing materials. The trade-off is that it’s less durable than a Plano setup and can look a bit rough. For players who care about aesthetics at the table, this might matter. For players who just want something functional, it’s hard to beat the value.

3D-Printed Inserts and Organizers

For players with access to a 3D printer — or a friend who has one — printed inserts offer the most polished and space-efficient storage possible. The Gloomhaven community on Reddit and Thingiverse has developed a significant library of free models covering almost every component category.

What the Community Has Built

The most complete 3D-printed solution documented in the community is a full modular insert system — separate trays for monster stat cards, standee groups, tokens by type, and overlay tiles, all designed to stack inside the original box. Measuring component footprints and designing snug-fit boxes takes iteration, but the Reddit community has done most of that work already. Downloadable models for complete organizers exist and are regularly updated for different printer configurations.

The setup caddy is one of the most practical printed additions, even if you’re not going full 3D-printed insert. It’s a single tray designed to hold everything you need for the pre-game setup phase — scenario cards, event decks, loot tokens — so that setup becomes a single step rather than pulling from multiple containers. A printable setup and play caddy with separate token and card trays is available from the community and is genuinely one of the faster improvements you can make to your setup routine.

Note: If you’re interested in 3D-printed Gloomhaven organizers and accessories, keep an eye on this site — we’re exploring options for custom printed components that could be available directly through Everything Is A Game. We’ll share more when there’s something concrete to announce.

The Hybrid Print-and-Buy Approach

Most practical 3D-printing users don’t print everything. The smart approach is to print only the components that are genuinely awkward — usually the monster standee trays and the setup caddy — and use Plano boxes or bagged solutions for the rest. This is how most of the community’s low-cost solutions evolved from YASS: players added printed pieces where they found the Plano system frustrating, rather than rebuilding from scratch.

If you only print one thing, make it a monster tray system. Having monsters sorted by enemy type, with their stat cards and standees together in one removable tray, cuts scenario setup time more than almost any other single change.

Choosing the Right Approach for Your Game

The best storage solution depends on how seriously you’re playing Gloomhaven, how much time you want to invest in the build, and what your actual pain points are.

If you’re new to Gloomhaven or running a casual campaign with friends who play irregularly, the YASS Plano approach is almost certainly the right call. It’s cheap, proven, and easy to build over a weekend. You’ll notice the improvement immediately.

If you’re a maker who already has a printer running, the 3D-printed setup caddy and monster trays are worth doing before your next campaign session. The time saved during setup compounds quickly over a long campaign.

If you’re on a tight budget and comfortable improvising, the cardboard-and-repurposed-container method works. Just invest the time in labelling everything properly — that’s where most DIY systems fail.

For players deep into a long-running campaign, a hybrid approach often ends up being the most practical. Start with YASS, add printed components where you find friction, and build toward a system that fits how your specific group plays.

A Word on Card Sleeves

Whatever storage approach you choose, sleeve your cards before you build your organizer. Sleeved cards are thicker and wider, and a storage system built around unsleeved cards will be too tight once you add sleeves. Most experienced Gloomhaven players sleeve at minimum the ability cards and the attack modifier decks — those get shuffled repeatedly and wear out faster than other components.

Making Setup Fast: A Practical System

Regardless of storage method, the biggest gains in setup speed come from scenario-level pre-staging. Before a session, pull only the components you’ll need: the relevant map tiles, the monster groups listed in the scenario, their stat cards and standees, and the event decks for that session.

A dedicated “active scenario” tray or bag — whether Plano, printed, or a simple zip-lock — where you pre-stage these components means that actual table setup is just unpacking one container rather than hunting through several. Players who adopt this habit consistently report setup times under 15 minutes even for complex scenarios.

Understanding Gloomhaven’s card management system also changes how you think about organization — when you understand how hand size and initiative interact over a long scenario, you start storing ability cards in ways that reflect how you’ll actually use them, rather than just alphabetically.

If you’re still figuring out which characters will make the most of your campaign structure, our best Gloomhaven starting characters guide covers the options most forgiving for new players — useful context before you commit to organizing a full class set. And if your group is also thinking about Frosthaven, our comparison of the two campaigns covers the component differences worth knowing before you invest in a storage solution that has to cover both.

For players running Gloomhaven’s solo mode, the storage needs are slightly different — you’re managing fewer character sets at once but need faster individual access to scenario components. The setup caddy approach is particularly well-suited to solo play.

The Bottom Line

There’s no single correct Gloomhaven storage solution, but there is a wrong approach: leaving everything in the original box and hoping for the best. Any of the systems covered here — YASS, DIY containers, 3D-printed inserts, or a hybrid — will meaningfully improve your campaign experience.

Start with what fits your budget and time. Improve from there. The goal is a Gloomhaven box that opens ready to play, not one that requires a setup session before the session.

What’s your current storage setup, and what’s the biggest pain point you’re trying to solve? Drop it in the comments — we’d love to hear how other groups are handling the component mountain.

Want more Gloomhaven content? Subscribe to the Everything Is A Game newsletter for new guides, strategy deep-dives, and campaign tips straight to your inbox.

Continue Your Journey

• Complete Gloomhaven Strategy Guide: Character Synergy and Party Composition — How your party makeup affects everything from scenario difficulty to long-term campaign viability
• Gloomhaven Card Management: Hand Size and Initiative Mastery — The mechanical foundation that every Gloomhaven strategy decision builds on
• Gloomhaven Solo Play: Complete Setup and Strategy Guide — Solo-specific setup tips that pair well with the storage approaches in this guide
• The Ultimate Guide to Gloomhaven Expansions — What to expect component-wise from Forgotten Circles, Jaws of the Lion, and beyond
• 10 Things You Need to Know About Gloomhaven — Essential knowledge for anyone starting the campaign for the first time