Lantern's Legend Core Game Insert by Laserox (Patreon)

Note: This is absolutely NOT sponsored in any way shape or form. I paid full price for this and received no special treatment.

As a part of the expanding range of articles/content we're going to be bringing to you, today we're taking a look at one of the inserts out there. In specific the Lantern's Legend by Laserox (a Hungarian based company). So this is a very European friendly option.

Laserox are a small company of two people who make some very nice looking inlays. I have the exceptional Gloomhaven one from them (gosh the game was a hassle before getting it) and last week I picked up the Lantern's Legend. Laserox are a green company who use recycled materials and licensed wood, which are both things I have a great deal of appreciation for.

Ordering & Delivery

It took less than a week for the package to reach me, in fact it arrived way before the estimated delivery date. The external box took a bit of a banging and had collapsed on the top, but the actual package for the box was entirely pristine because of the padding between the cargo and the container (so to speak). I have no complaints about the delivery at all. Excellent service.

Packaging

I don't know about you, but I find the clean white recycled cardboard box with a single sticker holding the flap shut to be properly boutique and stylish. This is what understated class looks like.

Contents

I failed to photograph the stuff when it was first opened, but it's about 14-16 sheets of  laser cut, engraved plywood, two plastic pivots and clear instructions.

When assembled you end up with:

• 3x Engraved Bridge Sized Trays
• 1x Engraved Gear Tray
• 1x Engraved Settlement Event/Dice Tower Tray
• 1x Rulebook Tray
• 1x Terrain Tray
• 1x Settlement Card Tray
• 1x Token Tray
• 1x Blood Box/Tray

Assembly time: 1 hour 50 mins

Which will fit everything (apart from miniatures) from the core game, all expansions and all promo content with space to spare. Here's how it looks in the box. Top row is all the various non-card trays.

Bottom row is for the cards:

All Official stuff: That's two full sets of the gear cards there and the bridge cards include every single monster, all the promo content and still has space for one to two more monsters. 

On to the individual trays!

Decks

These are the card trays, which take up most of the space inside the box. They're very nicely engraved and the entire thing can be stained or painted whatever colour you desire.

The combs are for slotting in the wooden dividers, there is a few in the set and then you can order some extra if you want to. I decided to pass on the extras because I have the original 1.31 dividers and I prefer those. I love the lantern halberds on this in particular because of the clever work between form and flair.

All three of them look like this:

Now they don't allow for individual monsters to be transported, but you can easily pack one of these to hold the essential cards + the monster(s) you're taking to a session if you only want to part move things. But lets be honest, if you're taking this game somewhere, you're taking the entire thing. Otherwise you're not a cool kid.

The gear box is also thematically engraved.

As mentioned above, this one looks very full because of the sheer number of cards I own (enough for 6 sets of everything for all players), if you're being more reasonable, you'll find that it has a lot more space in it.

Other Trays

The other trays can all be seen above, they're not engraved with one exception. The Settlement Location/Dice Tower Tray. Every single one is sized so it is easy to access the components inside, but also snug enough that it fits efficiently. About the only element extra I would have liked is 'finger holes' on the bottom, that makes it easier to remove things from the trays when they're quite large.

Here's the settlement location tray. You can see how the side pops up and you get an engraved dice tower!

The white and ivory dice show the difference between the very first kickstarter release dice (quite rare) and the 1.5 version!

This dice tower is a neat addition, but it is important to note that it is a little tight, so the dice sometimes get stuck length ways. This means it's not a suitable replacement for a full separate dice tower, but for those of you who want something that fits in the box along with everything else, boom. 

Yeah, I really liked the dice tower in idea, in practice it's not won me over yet. The Hit Location dice are fine, but the d10s are the ones that stick. Also it's not quite firm enough when fully flipped up. It tilts forward occasionally with use and I'm not sure if that's because I didn't assemble it well enough or not.

The rest of the trays are serviceable, they're not flashy, but they do the job, both in the box and on the table. Let us look at the two token trays.

The Token Trays

So there are two token trays, the first is the Blood Tray, which holds all the blood tokens and whatever else you like, it sits inside the event card tray in the box and to be honest, I couldn't find much to fill it up! 

It's on the right in this picture. It looks cool and has that handle/cap but I really haven't figured out all the uses for it at this point. 

The token tray is nicely labeled and has a huge amount of room, so you can space things out and I'm pretty sure that even in coin capsules they'll fit well. In fact the tokens feel a little swamped in there at the moment, but I have another set of tokens on the mainland and that'll fill these up nicely. It works really well on the table however, keeping it all nice and tidy.

Negatives

Outside of the oddity of the blood tray, the oversize of the token tray and the problems with the dice tray there is one negative to report here and I do consider it a bit concerning. My inlay was obviously damaged before it had been boxed up. There was large chipping on the corner of the engraved large deck box fronts and several of the sheets had their contents held in place via masking tape on the back which left small marks while I removed it. It seemed that this one had been boxed up by someone who knew that it was a little defective. Which I am disappointed about when compared to the sheer amazing quality that the Gloomhaven inlay was.

So, I can't give this one full marks because of the clear damage that the product received before it was shipped to me, that's not a great thing. Also the dice tower isn't as good as a stand alone one would be. But overall, I really like it, it looks good, it's going to look even better when stained and painted and it doesn't add too much weight to the box. 

Also, while there's room for a bit more promo content, there's no way that anyone is going to be fitting the Gambler's Chest nonsense into this one along with the core stuff and the expansions, but that's not surprising given that the GC is going to require its own box in the first place and goodness knows how large the Box for the "book" Campaigns of Death is going to be.

So, in all I give it!

8/10

It is available at this link:  https://laserox.net/kdm hopefully you'll have more like than I when it comes to getting an undamaged product. I could have reached out to them about sorting this out, but I chose not to because the damage is something I can live with.

If you are someone who makes accessories for KDM or knows someone who does, please feel free to send me a message here or on my business email (fenbatten at gmail dot com) and we can discuss! I am very willing to look at more inlays, dice towers,