Our Ultimate Guide to Storing and Carrying Your Marvel Champions Collection

It’s no secret that we love Marvel Champions, and we buy pretty much everything that comes out for it. But there’s some extra stuff we buy beyond official products that makes life so much easier when we’re playing. In this article, we’re going to talk all about a few options for storing and transporting your Marvel Champions collection specifically, as well as showing you how we store and organise our own collection on a budget. First though – an important disclaimer.

Storage Solutions for Marvel Champions

How We Store Our Collection

We’ve tried to keep storing our collection as simple and budget-efficient as possible, and while our solution is nowhere near as sophisticated as many peoples’, it absolutely works for us, and I want to highlight it first before we get into some more expensive solutions.

Villain Storage Boxes

Our villain storage actually uses our empty expansion boxes with some dividers we made ourselves by sticking some sticky tabs onto some Magic tokens, but you can also just use any old bit of card you have lying around for this!

What you see here is the core set villains, every Scenario pack villain released to date, and every expansion villain from the Rise of Red Skull*, Galaxy’s Most Wanted*, The Mad Titan’s Shadow*, and Sinister Motives*, and Mutant Genesis* expansions, as well as villains from all released scenario packs to date.

Once we run out of space in these boxes, we’ll likely look at one of the boxes we’re going to cover later in this article, or use an additional expansion box.

Modular Set Boxes

Our modular sets are stored in our core set box, because there are a ton of different modular sets to store once your collection grows, and it’s much easier to flick through them if they’re all stored together.

The standard insert is… not great. But it’s more than good enough for this kind of storage, and should last us at least a few more expansions.

While you likely know exactly which villain you want to play, modulars can be a harder choice, so having them in the largest box essentially means we can flick through and grab one at random!

Hero Storage Boxes

We’ve talked about this in our article about sleeves, but our low-budget solution for hero storage makes use of all of the many, many boxes of Dragon Shield Matte Clear sleeves* that we get through. Each Dragon Shield box holds enough cards to store a fully-built deck, plus associated obligations and nemesis cards, or it can hold the identities, hero cards, nemesis and obligations for 3 heroes in sleeves! We then store those boxes inside our empty expansion boxes, and when we run out of space, we simply start using another box. Thus far, the rate heroes have come out has not outpaced our expansion box usage!

Aspect Card Binder

This is where we move away from boxes, because honestly while I don’t hate boxes when you know exactly what cards you need and where they are, I find it so much easier to flick through binders when looking through cards.

Right now, we’ve got a single binder which holds all of our cards from all aspects. It’s sorted by aspect, and by card type within the aspect (for example events, upgrades, allies etc.), with special resources at the back. This makes it much easier to flick through to find the cards I need for our decks than flicking through cards, at least for me.

If you go this route, we recommend a binder that has a minimum of 4 rings, like the Ultra Pro Collector Card Album*, as cards can get surprisingly heavy, and using card pocket sleeves such as Ultra Pro Silver 9-Pocket Pages*, or the cheaper Gamegenic Ultrasonic 9-Pocket Pages*.

You may also want to consider a non-ringed binder if you’re worried about the rings damaging cards (as this is a potential risk, but not a huge one unless you have a cheap binder), such as an Ultra Pro 9-Pocket Eclipse binder*, which is great quality, but will only hold 360 cards, which can’t be expanded. But there’s nothing that stops you from buying more binders… They also come in a variety of colours, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been tempted to get one in Blue*, Yellow*, Green*, and Red*, for obvious reasons…

All of these things combine to make a solution that’s quick for us to sort through, as well as being modular enough that we don’t have to pull out the entire collection every single time we play. It’s also cheap and easy to put together, as the only additional purchases are effectively the binder and card pocket sleeves. We’ve already bought the sleeves, so the boxes I count as being free, and everything else is using components that came with the game. Neat! But let’s look at some more sophisticated solutions for those of you who want to step it up a little. Obviously, we have yet to try these solutions ourselves, as frankly they’re a little excessive and I’d rather spend that money on more games (or our hosting, that’s expensive, one last quick reminder that if you find this useful and want to support us, we deeply appreciate it! I might spend it on those binders…)

Inserts & Dividers

It’s no secret that the core game insert is just… not great. For some reason it’s sized incorrectly for the cards, and there are no out-of-the-box dividers. While we used Magic ad cards and tokens with little sticky labels for ours, there are better solutions that we’re strongly considering at the time of writing that plenty of people use.

The Core Set Insert* is a definite upgrade on the original box’s insert, and you’ll be able to fit a lot more cards into the same box using it. It also holds the core tokens and cards, and it’s just plain neat.

The downside is that this does require some gluing and assembly before it’ll be ready to go, so this isn’t a zero-effort solution the way you might expect looking at it.

While it’s labelled as a Rise of Red Skull insert*, this insert will actually work for any of the expansions, as all of the expansions are the same physical dimensions.

Just like the core set insert, you’ll find that some assembly is required with this insert.

Dividers are another thing that can make it a lot easier to organise your collection boxes, and you’ll want some that work horizontally like Ultra Pro’s Eclipse Dividers*, as unless you go with a vertical card storage solution (which we’ll cover next), you’ll be laying your cards horizontally, not vertically, which will mean they won’t work as dividers. Look out for that!

Storage Boxes and Transport Containers

The last thing we’re going to cover is some alternative boxes for collection storage, as well as some deck boxes for carrying your collection around, because nobody wants to walk around with their entire collection if they’re taking the game to someone else’s house or an LGS to play!

Storage Boxes

While I’m not a huge fan of storage cases, if I were to buy any, I’d probably go for something like an e-Raptor card storage case*. They’re relatively cheap, made of lightweight but sturdy MDF, and even come with their own dividers. They’re stackable, and the plain design means they’ll blend into other furniture nicely, though you can get themed and decorated versions. Contrary to the page at the time of writing, the large box fits 1400 cards, and the dimensions of the case are 341x335x118mm.

You can also get the small version* which as far as I can tell, will absolutely fit on a Kallax bookshelf, because let’s be honest, you probably have a Kallax shelf if you’re into board games! The small box holds a respectable 950 cards, and the dimensions are 262x250x118mm.

There are a bunch of different storage cases out there, and honestly, most of them are very similar. There’s also some really pretty ones out there on sites like Etsy if you want to really splash out on your collection. Here’s a few things you’re going to look out for though:

• A case that holds too many cards is going to be heavy. Avoid getting the multi-row cardboard bulk boxes that people use for massive TCG collections unless you’re happy lifting a lot of weight. While they’ll comfortably hold all of your cards, it becomes completely impractical to use the cards for a game where you actively pull cards out on a regular basis, and those sorts of boxes are mostly just intended for long-term storage.
• Consider where you’ll store your storage. This sounds obvious, but it’s very easy to go “This is perfect and will hold all my cards” only to find that you’ve got nowhere to put it.
• Consider how you’re going to use the boxes, and what your plans are as your collection expands.
• Make sure your chosen solution can hold sleeved cards. Sleeves add a few millimetres onto the sides of your cards, but a too-snug solution sometimes won’t account for that.

Deck Boxes

Deck boxes are sturdier cases designed for transporting cards around, for when you’re out and about spreading the good word about the game. They’re going to be more expensive than storage cases, but I’m going to talk about them separately because they’re worth the expense if you take your game out and about, as you need to protect it.

When looking at deck boxes, you’ve got a couple of routes you can go, the first being to buy a single box that can hold all the cards you have with you, the second being whether to buy multiple boxes to make the cards easier to carry and transport. Let’s look at the single-box solution first.

For a single box, we’ve got to assume these things:

• Ideally, we want 60 cards’ worth of storage per hero. That’s a 40-50 card deck, plus the nemesis of around 5 cards, plus potentially some extra space for things like Doctor Strange’s invocation deck. So for a 4-player setup, we’re looking at storing 240 cards.
• We probably won’t be doing more than a couple of villains in a single play session, so we can go ahead and assume maybe another 120 cards for a variety of modulars and two large villain decks. This is a very hand-wavy estimate, but should work out.
• This means in total, our deck box should hold at least 360 cards, plus room for extra tokens, dice, dials and whatever else we’re carrying. Any extra space can be filled with additional heroes and villain deck setups, so more space  than this isn’t really a problem.

Now that we have a baseline, let’s look at solutions.

The Gamegenic Dungeon S 550+* is a long storage box that can hold up to 550 double-sleeved cards, so you can hold a ton of cards (potentially too many!) if you’re only single-sleeving, which we typically recommend as Marvel Champions isn’t a TCG with expensive chase cards to protect.

What’s more, it’s big enough that you can actually slot other deck boxes inside of it! So if you want to be super safe, you could get one of these and some individual deck boxes that fit inside it (but please check the size of the deckbox before doing that, we’ve not checked the sizing of boxes we link in this article for box-in-box inception).

Another hit from Gamegenic is their budget solution, the Fourtress*. It’s cheap, and designed to hold 320 double-sleeved cards, so single-sleeved that’s probably around 400-450. While not as sturdy as a Dungeon, the Fourtress is considerably cheaper and more than enough to protect cards from bumps on your travels.

Probably my favourite of the Gamegenic solutions, however, is the Card’s Lair*, which holds 400 double-sleeved cards (again, around 550 single-sleeved) as well as having handy little draws and trays for your tokens.

I like this solution the most out of the single box suggestions, as it means you don’t need a separate solution for things like tokens, dice, and it just looks really nice on the table.

If you’re going longer distance, such as on flights, then you’re going to need an even sturdier box. A popular solution from competitive TCGs is the GT line of Luggage Deck Boxes*. It’s got a hard shell, which gives your cards an extra layer of protection, as well as a foam lining to protect from rough baggage handlers.

The only downside is this deck box only holds 200 double-sleeved cards, which means it’s only going to hold around 250-300 in single sleeves, which is short of our target. That being said, that just means you can’t carry as many villains, which is normally totally fine if you’re using Marvel Champions as a travel game.

That being said, these boxes can be quite big and heavy. If you’re packing your decks into a bag or distributing the load between people, it can be a better idea to get some individual deck boxes. Let’s look at a few good candidates.

For the budget-conscious, there are plenty of cheap plastic deck boxes on the market that will be more than good enough to protect your decks on the move, while being easy to distribute around. A prime example of this is the most Basic Ultra Pro Deck Boxes*, which are just a few pounds each, and hold up to 80 cards. One per deck, job done. They come in a variety of colours, and they’re more than good enough if you just want something to keep your cards together on the go.

Moving a bit more up-market, you’ve got the Gamegenic Sidekick, which I personally love for my Magic decks. It’s sturdy, compact, and importantly to me, it holds the cards on their sides. I like side-loading because it makes it easy to get the deck out of the box on the other end without poking the tops of cards (where the sleeve is open). What can I say, I’m clumsy. You can store up to 100 double-sleeved cards in there, so that’s enough space for two hero decks and a small villain deck, all by itself. It’s really a great solution for super compact builds, but it might be a squeeze, and you’ll need to find somewhere else to put dice, status cards, and other accessories.

What makes me love this solution even more is it fits really nicely into the Gamegenic Dungeon and Card Lair boxes that we linked further up the page. This means you can box up your cards and then hold them all together with a Dungeon for a slick, secure solution that really gives your collection a ton of protection.

This is, of course, a ton of information, so I’m going to stop there before things get too crazy. There’s a ton of deck boxes and storage solutions out there, from simple plastic boxes to ornate wooden chests, and what’s most important is to put some thought in and consider what works best for you.

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