I waffled between 3 or 4 stars on this one. Assigning a rating was hard because, despite the overwhelming positives about this crate, there were also some imperative faults.
Let’s begin with those faults: (1) HUGE issue; the design omits storage for the event and fire decks. It’s infuriating. I had to modify most of the token trays anyway so at first I tried storing them in one of those, but the cards kept sliding around. I finally had to split the decks amongst several plastic playing card containers I had lying around and squeezed them into the remaining space above the game board/rulebook storage. (2) the token trays are marked on the bottom, which is cute, but the number of tokens per type that are allotted to each space don’t always fit, even without capsules. (3) if you capsule your tokens, DO NOT GLUE THE TOKEN TRAYS. DO NOT GLUE IN THE MEEPLE DIVIDERS. I can’t emphasize this enough. Fire Rescue erred on the side of caution with each expansion, overloading the buyer with an excess of certain tokens. Add to that the odd size of some of those tokens, and once capsuled, the intended token storage spaces are completely irrelevant. I had to double up all my firemen meeples in their storage slots, then use the leftover space to slot out and store tokens that couldn’t fit in the trays. I had to modify every single token tray in terms of divider placement or complete removal except for the two intended to hold the stair, explosion, and oversized tokens, and the large flame/smoke tokens. Not one tray (except the oversized token tray) has the right tokens in the indicated places. In fact, one whole token tray is literally just holding foam tokens, with all dividers removed. Another has all dividers removed and holds about half the large fire/smoke tokens and then a small stack of window tokens. The ? Tokens are where the fire/smoke tokens were supposed to go. The dice and colored meeple bases are shoved in with the black tracker cubes in that same tray. And even WITH all these mods, a majority of the fire/smoke and window tokens just don’t fit. I tried putting them in a token storage container, but that was too tall to fit in the remaining gap where the game boards are stored. I finally resorted to dividing them up in more playing card containers, thus filling that space completely. And there is still one set of tokens I haven’t capsuled, which once I do, have nowhere to go. It’s just a mess. I’d have rather had all token tray have the same sides as the oversized token tray, with tons of slots on those sides paired with removable dividers, and no engravings on the bottom so I could choose where to put things ... and also, that the divider in the center/middle places of the crate organizer unit had been removable for ease of rearrangement. (4) its an officially licensed crate from what I gather, but the game logo is only on the top, and not the sides. If you’re going to put the official logo on there, put it everywhere! People don’t always store their games front facing out.
So, yeah, there are some big downsides to this crate. Not a lot of them, but the flaws that do exist are huge. So ... why a 4 and not a 3? Well, this WAS the easiest crate assembly I ever executed, until I realized I had to dismantle and modify all the token trays. And while it doesn’t adequately store all the tokens, not capsuled OR capsuled, for each category once you add up the totals for all expansions, it DOES have specific slots for all of them. And if nothing had to be modified, it’s a clear cut and simple structure, convenient for frequent gameplay. Also, to be fair, after all the expansions there IS gap space where the boards/rule books go, so the lack of event and fire deck storage area can be directly interpreted as “put them in playing card boxes and shove them in here, dude.†The official logo, while only being located in one place on the box, is still a huge bonus if you don’t feel the desire for multiple markings, because it in turn means no creating logo decals from scratch.
Conclusion: If you can find a thin storage container for excess tokens to fit atop the game boards, along with at least three playing card containers (the event deck is big enough with sleeves that it must be split between two containers), and you’re a casual player vs. player and collector, then I don’t see the harm in buying this crate. I honestly don’t think anyone else could make a better, more convenient one, even with its faults. I guess I wouldn’t take back the purchase ... I just wish I’d have known what needed modifying ahead of time so it hadn’t been so much work; and I also wish I had the time to devote to my woodworking shop in order to modify this a bit more heavily for the accommodation of one more layer of token trays.
