Magic: The Gathering is a great card game, but there are thousands of cards that you want to keep as pristine and perfect as possible. This becomes even more tricky with variants like Commander, which features a deck of one hundred cards. How are you supposed to keep all that organized and safe? The Card Caddy.
The Card Caddy is a neat little box designed to not only carry around cards and keep them safe, but can also be used as both a draw and discard pile, making sure every play field is as organized as possible. While the original Card Caddy is already available for purchase, creator Chris Nichols is returning to Kickstarter to help fund development on bigger and better models.
“I did a Kickstarter in March of 2015 for the first injection molded version of the Card Caddy,” Nichols told iDigitalTimes. “I only had to pay $500 out of my own pocket, and we were only two weeks late delivering rewards.”.
To anyone who hasn’t backed a Kickstarter project before, a two-week delay on delivery is just about as good as you are going to get.
“It went really well and showed me there was enough of a market to have a larger publisher run made, which I got in December,” Nichols continued. This allowed him to get his product available in actual stores. “I started selling those online and through some local retailers,” he said.
The new line of Card Caddies (available through a new Kickstarter campaign, which is live as of Thursday morning) are bigger, allowing more cards to be stored. The Double-Decker Card Caddy can hold two regular 54 playing card decks, 100 single sleeved cards or 75 double sleeved cards.
If enough stretch goals are met, Nichols can also make Triple-Decker Card Caddies and a whole line of gaming accessories. The Triple-Decker is big enough to hold three regular 54 playing card decks, 125 single sleeved cards or 100 double sleeved cards. Some really cool features include add-ons like a storage tray, score counter and more.
“The add-ons will fit onto any size of Card Caddy,” Nichols said.
All you have to do is snap whatever accessory you want to the lid of the box. These accessories include a storage area for dice or counters, a score keeping pad complete with score markers, a storage box specifically designed for poker chips or tokens and there’s even a dice tower in the works.
“You can make a modular, customized storage system to fit your needs,” Nichols said.
One of the best parts about making a product on Kickstarter is the feedback and interaction you get from your customers, said Nichols. These interactions have even inspired Nichols to create new products.
“It’s been great to be able to get people’s ideas and input on it while I’m still early enough in product development that I can really integrate some of those,” he said. “I’m very excited.”
If you aren’t a Magic: The Gathering or other card game player, there are still plenty of applications you might find for the Card Caddy as well.
“We were just playing Settlers of Catan and used a couple of Card Caddies to keep track of the different piles of cards,” Nichols said. “I’ve had people talk to me about Splendor, Firefly, really any tabletop game where you’ve got a lot of draw and discard piles where they seem to get messy or disorganized.”
You can also simply use the Card Caddy for a regular deck of cards. “The single-decker version is nice for parents or anyone who has kids on the go,” said Nichols. “It’s a nice alternative to using a phone, you can pull out a deck of cards for the kids to play at the doctor’s office or wherever you’re waiting or hanging out.”
The current Kickstarter campaign for the Card Caddy is live and will run until April 14. Products are expected to ship some time in July. If this campaign is anything like Nichols’ last one, you can actually expect to get your Card Caddy around then as well.
So what do you think? Are you interested in getting a Card Caddy for yourself? What other add-ons do you think would be useful for a deck box? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
