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Review of e-Raptor Insert Dune + Ixians & Tleilaxu
Blurb from the publisher: 'The e-Raptor Insert compatible with Dune and its Ixians & Tleilaxu expansion is a perfect accessory designed to organize and improve the gameplay of the board game.
Thanks to this insert you can arrange all its components and keep them in order - no more mess on the table while playing. No more looking for necessary elements during the game.
You can hold all your miniatures, sleeved cards, tokens, dice etc. in one place without being afraid of losing control of the setting. They can be easily accessed and do not take as much space as during the game without an insert. Also, when the box is closed, the components are still kept in order, ready for setting another game quicker than ever before.
The insert is durable and made of high quality HDF. No glue is required to assemble it. You can hold all the game's components inside the box, including the board, the player aids and the manual.'
What you get: Your EUR 38,50 or equivalent will buy you the e-Raptor Insert Dune + Ixians & Tleilaxu, an organizer that can accommodate the base game and the first (and only, up to now) expansion of the Dune game line.
Upon opening the organizer one is greeted by 3 HDF panels containing 83 laser-cut wooden elements. When one finishes with assembly, he ends up with sixteen items, for a total of 27 compartments. The six card trays take into account the size of the cards when sleeved.
The strong points: There's no sugarcoating it; the initial insert of Dune did not amount to much, and even more so when one added the contents of the first expansion. Everything needed to be held in ziplock bags in order for setup time to be considered acceptable. That aside, the game's small tokens tend to be all over the place. In smaller tables, that is an issue. You don't want to lose any of them, do you?
Here comes the e-Raptor Insert. The compartments fit the box tightly, very tightly. The cards are placed into their compartments by type. You don't need to sort them out; take a compartment out, shuffle them (with the exception of a single compartment holding the reference cards), put them back in and you are ready to begin. Your cards will be held clear of all other materials during the game, not to mention that you can move the compartments around the board for better visibility and reach. Each faction also ranges its materials in a dedicated compartment. In order to play any one of them, you just grab the compartment, put it in front of you, and you are ready to begin. No fuss, no wasted time, no messy table during the game. Compartments are lidless, yet the brilliant engineering behind them means that nothing ever spills, irrespective of whether you store the game horizontally, diagonally, or vertically. I am very pleasantly surprised by this, seeing how small the factions' small tokens are.
The inserts of e-Raptor are light years ahead of the competition when it comes to the quality of the laser cutting process and the lack of saw dust, splinters, and any kind of wood residue. It is always a good idea to clean the panels before assembly, yet you might not always need to. All the interlocking components have a lock of sorts in order to be easily assembled and disassembled. In that sense, they require a single clicking motion, not raw power. They also do not grind against their interlocking components. When e-Raptor says that you don't need glue, they really mean it.
E-Raptor's line of inserts supports more than 60 different games up to now. Even if you don't play Dune, you are very likely to find an insert for the games that you play the most.
The weak points: The publisher's assembly instruction booklets tend to be lazy, this one however is borderline insulting. Pieces are numbered, and the instructions go along the lines of 'assemble from the first to the last number' by only showing the base from each compartment. Good grief. Assembly is not hard at all, yet this should have been a rather mindless exercise while streaming your favourite show. As things stand, you'd better be attentive lest you disassemble and reassemble a number of times. Make sure you separate all the materials in advance. Assembly lasts for a while. This doesn't have to do with the complexity of the exercise; there are simply too many components here, leading to a high number of trays.
This is a luxury item addressed to deep-pocket gamers. It actually costs as much as a game itself. If that sounds expensive to your wallet, it probably is. Incidentally, and in case you didn't figure that out, by using the present product you will have to dispose of the game's original insert or store it elsewhere.
After you place both the base game and the expansion's contents in the insert, there is not that much space remaining. If another expansion comes out for Dune, I have doubts as to whether its components can be stored here. Keep this in mind when you buy it, to avoid future disappointments.
Conclusion: The e-Raptor Insert Dune + Ixians & Tleilaxu is a prime example of great engineering. Its lidless compartments support your game not only when it rests but also when you play it. If it weren't for the afterthought of a future expansion failing to fit in here if and when it comes out, it would have reached perfection.
To find out more about e-Raptor and its insert for Dune and its Ixians & Tleilaxu expansion take a look at http://e-raptor.pl.
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