Recently I was given the opportunity to check out a product from Go7Gaming. That product was the TRAIN-001 Insert for Trains. The insert came in a flat rate box. Inside there were a couple of laser cut wooden sheets inside a large ziplock bag. This also came with the TRAIN-DIV-002 dividers. After looking for the instructions inside the package, I realized that I needed to go online for these as there were none included. After reading over everything, I was then ready to assemble the product.
First, let me explain what this product is and how it is used. To begin with, it’s an insert for the Trains deck building game. This insert will hold all of the contents of the base game and both expansions. It also has room for future expansions. Once it’s been assembled, the insert makes it possible to keep all of the cards and tokens that come included in the box separate. The insert looks really nice once it’s finished. Now then, let’s go ahead and get into how to assemble this insert. We’ll start off by separating out all the different wooden sheets. Each piece is cut so that you can easily punch it out from the main sheet that it’s attached to.
If you’ve read any of my reviews for Go7Gaming inserts, you already know that glue is pretty much a staple for building these things. It’s not an absolute necessity as you can use other things like tape, but it’s definitely the best option. With this review I won’t be telling you each time when to add glue to your pieces. Just be aware that if there are 2 pieces being put together, you’ll want to apply glue between them both. With that said, let’s begin the assembling process.
As you will notice, there’s not a lot of assembly to be done with this product, so this won’t take a long time to complete. The first thing that you’ll want to do is lay the base out on your work area. You’ll then need to attach the two middle dividers to the base. Once you’ve got these pieces attached, it should look something like this.
The next thing you’ll need to do is to attach the end pieces with the cut outs for the dividers onto the base, attaching them to the middle dividers. Once you’ve got that done, it should look something like this.
Finally, you will need to connect the long side walls on either side of what you’ve already constructed. These will attach to the end pieces and the base. Once that’s done, it should look something like this.
Once you’ve got all this together, you can place the insert into your game box and add the card dividers. With plenty of dividers, you can pretty much set things up the way that you want inside the box. This is how I have mine arranged for the moment.
I have all the tokens, wooden and cardboard pieces in the baggies at the front of my box. Currently I only have the core game separated out, so the Rising Sun expansion hasn’t been completely arranged the way that it will end up being. Once everything is together you can place the game board on the top, like so.
Unfortunately there’s not enough room to add both boards from the core game and the expansion. When I did, this is what happens…the lid doesn’t close all the way. This concludes the assembly process.
MATERIALS
In this section I would normally cover the different components of the game and how they look. However since this is an insert and not a game, I’ll describe the packing and insert instead. Everything came prepackaged in a flat rate shipping box. Inside the box, everything for this insert was placed inside a large zip lock style bag. Everything looked very nice and there were no problems with anything. The wooden sheets are nice and thick and are very easy to punch out for each of the different pieces. If you decided to use glue or tape, you’ll need to supply your own as the organizer does not come with any included. Assembling the product wasn’t all that hard and I’m pretty sure I could have figured it out, even without instructions. The simplicity of the insert made it possible to finish the assembly fairly quickly. Overall the materials look great and everything is strong and durable. I’m very pleased with the overall look and feel of this product.
9 out of 10
INSTRUCTION
In this section I would normally explain the rulebook of the game, going into detail about the different sections. Since this is an insert I will cover the instructions that came with the insert instead. This part is actually quite simple. There weren’t any. Basically I had to go online to the website, find the insert there and use the instructions found on the site to be able to assemble the insert. As I mentioned earlier, I think I could have probably figured it out without the instructions. After all, it is pretty much only 2 sheets of wood. The parts are pretty much self explanatory. That said, I’m still thankful that there was a detailed process on the website that walked me through each step of assembling the insert. There were even pictures to help me out. Everything on the site was explained very well and I didn’t find it difficult to figure out what went where. Overall, I’m quite pleased with the instructions online, but I really wish I’d had a physical copy to use instead. For this case, I will give a double review. The first for the lack of instructions and the second for the actual instructions online.
0/7 out of 10
CONSTRUCTION
In this section, I would normally be explaining the game and how it’s played, along with my thoughts on the whole thing. Instead, I’ll give my thoughts on the assembly process and anything else that I feel is important to note. As I already mentioned, this didn’t take very long time to put together. That was due in part to the small amount of pieces that came with the product. Most everything was easy to figure out where it goes, even without instructions. One thing to mention is that just like with all Go7Gaming inserts, this one is a bit loose around the joints and connections so be you’ll need to be aware of this and make sure that you have some glue or something to hold it all together. As you can tell from the pictures, there’s still a lot of extra room inside the insert, even with both expansions and all the pieces inside. That makes this perfect for adding any future expansions that might come out. As it is now, I have a ton of dividers and a lot of empty space. I went ahead and added a bunch of dividers just to fill space and strengthen things inside, just in case. Overall, this is one that will hold a lot of cards and tokens quite nicely. I’m happy to have it as it should make future game play quicker to set up and take down. I would recommend this insert for anyone that owns Trains and any of the expansions for it. It’s strong and well designed.
8 out of 10
OVERALL
The Go7Gaming TRAIN-001 Insert for Trains is a great product that helps to organize your expansions and core box for Trains. It also includes lots of extra room for other pieces like the tokens and wooden pieces of the game. The organizer has plenty of room for everything that comes in the core box and will hold both expansions as well. There’s even room for future expansions. The materials are good and sturdy. They hold everything in a compact and organized way. The only problem that I found was that there’s not enough room to hold more than one of the game boards. Guess those will need to be left out or the box will end up being unable to close. The assembly process took a little bit of extra time due to the lack of instructions which was a minor frustration. I did find great instructions online after a bit of searching though, so there’s that. Once assembled, the insert looks pretty good and it gets the job done with plenty of extra space which I like a lot. I would recommend this for owners of Trains, especially if they have any of the expansions. Just be aware that you will need to figure out what to do with those extra game boards. This insert also makes things a little quicker for setting up and taking down the game. Overall I’m quite pleased with the insert.
8 out of 10
For more information about this and other great products, please check out Go7Gaming at their site.
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