Upgrading Board Games with a 3D Printer

I recently bought a Creality K2 3D printer with one particular goal in mind: upgrading some of the board games that get played the most in our collection. Inserts, replacement tokens and small accessories seemed like a perfect place to start, and after quite a few hours of printing, I can safely say it worked out even better than expected.

There was definitely some trial and error involved, especially at the start. A few prints failed, some filament was wasted and not everything came off the printer perfectly the first time. But once we got the hang of it, the printer quickly became a very useful addition to the board game shelf.

Starting with Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars was one of the first games I wanted to upgrade. It is one of our most played games, so anything that makes setup, storage and actual play a little easier is very welcome.

The first print was a full box insert. Instead of having cards, tiles, cubes and other components loosely stored in bags, everything now has its own place. The different trays can simply be taken out of the box and placed on the table, which makes setup noticeably faster. Packing everything away afterwards is just as easy.

The biggest improvement, however, was printing player board overlays. Anyone who has played Terraforming Mars with the original player boards knows how easily the resource cubes can slide around. One accidental bump of the table and you may suddenly be trying to remember what your production values were.

The overlays sit on top of the original boards and create recessed spaces for all of the cubes, keeping everything exactly where it should be. It is a very simple upgrade, but also one of the best things I have printed so far. I really would not want to play without them anymore.

Better Inserts for Smaller Games

After Terraforming Mars, I moved on to a few much smaller games, including Deep Sea Adventure and Scout! from OINK Games.

I really like the tiny OINK boxes, but fitting an entire game into such a small package means the components tend to sit loose inside. Getting everything out can be annoying, and the pieces move around quite a bit when transporting the games.

With the new inserts, every component has its own compartment. Deep Sea Adventure now keeps its treasure tokens, explorers and dice neatly separated, while the cards and tokens in Scout! are much easier to take out and put away. These are small changes, but they make games that are already very portable even nicer to bring along.

I also printed an insert for Patchwork, where all the components previously sat loose in the box. It is probably not the most exciting kind of 3D print to show off, but inserts might be the upgrades I appreciate most in practice. They make setup faster, keep components protected and make the inside of the box much less chaotic.

Upgrading the Components on the Table

Once the boxes were organized, I started printing some accessories that would actually be used during the game.

For Les Ruines Perdues de Narak I printed a complete set of compass tokens. The original cardboard tokens work perfectly fine, but the printed versions have much more presence on the table. They are thicker, have more detail and use a second colour for the compass pointer. They do not change the gameplay at all, but I enjoy using them much more than the cardboard pieces.

Anno 1800: The Board Game received a similar upgrade with new trade tokens. These are based on the trading icon from the game, but instead of being flat cardboard squares they have a proper shape with raised arrows in a contrasting colour.

This is also where multi-colour printing becomes especially fun. You do not need a complicated model or lots of colours to create something that looks good. Sometimes one small coloured detail is enough to make a printed component feel like it belongs in the game.

Was It Worth It?

So far, absolutely. There was a learning curve and a fair amount of wasted filament at the beginning, but every print makes the process a little easier to understand.

For now, inserts are probably my favourite thing to print because they make such a practical difference every time a game reaches the table. Accessories are a close second, especially when they replace simple cardboard pieces with something that feels nicer to use.

There are still plenty of games in the collection that could use an upgrade, so I am already looking for more interesting things to print. And who knows, once we get a little better at it, the next step might be designing some custom inserts and components ourselves.

Publié le 11 Sep 2026 par Jerodev