American Tank Ace: 1944-1945 – Storage Solution With Rails on Boards

The previous wargame sets of the wonderful storage trays from Rails on Boards/Cube4Me have been fairly easy for even my non-spatial brain to put together.

Find a tray (or maybe two), divide the pieces, maybe a couple of card trays, and Bob’s your uncle (why is that never something like “Steve’s your uncle?”)

Today, though, we had a bit of a challenge, especially because I’m running out of the trays that Rails on Boards sent to me for sample to build some sets.

American Tank Ace: 1944-1945 is a solo World War II wargame from Compass Games, designed by Gregory M. Smith, where players are commanding an American tank in Europe after D-Day, trying to survive and thrive all the way to the fall of Germany.

It’s another game where you have a ton of counters but you only need a few different ones in each scenario.

This calls for a storage solution!

But this one was tricky, because the box is so damned thin and it’s got a bunch of stuff in it already!

There are a lot of counters in this game, but not so many that two of the big plastic trays would be useable (though that might actually work in a pinch to separate all of the German units better than I did here).

What I ended up doing was using two of the 12-compartment, 8mm deep trays with only one lid. That way they would mesh together very nicely.

On the bottom, I put all of the campaign counters, your crew skills, unit designation, your tank possibilities, as well as the souvenirs you can find on the battlefield. There’s also smoke and scenario setup counters in one of the compartments.

These can’t be filled quite as much since it needs the top tray to mesh with it.

In the top tray with the lid is all the German counters and all of your ammunition counters.

However, I was a couple of compartments short…and then there’s still the dice!

What I ended up doing was using a 1-compartment Mini Euro Card tray to hold the status markers and the dice.

This tray is easy to have next to you and use when your tank is immobilized or when you dig in, or maybe turn your turret.

The trays fit into the box so easily that it looks like it was almost made for it.

And there is literally no lid lift at all!

I would like to try this with two 8mm 20-compartment trays, which would let me sort the Germans out even more as well as having a compartment for the status markers and such.

However, there may be no room for the dice. They might fit snugly between the edge of the trays and the box, though. I’m not sure.

Sadly, since I only have one of those trays left, I couldn’t try it.

One of those trays is definitely not enough.

The set I put together will certainly do in a pinch, though!

Thanks to Rails on Boards for providing me with the trays to enable me to put these together.

I’m looking forward to trying out this game, now that I’m not lost in a sea of unsorted (or multiply-bagged) counters.

Have you tried this one?

Let me know in the comments.