Hi, I’m Russet Taupe, professional board game designer. You likely recognize me from my work on Risk Godstorm, where I was in charge of selecting the wide array of player colors, including brown, and slightly less brown.

But Pair Of Dice Paradise has asked me here today to talk about my most recent project, my work on the Machi Koro: Harbor expansion. Oh, I didn’t have a hand in the development of the game’s graphic design, theme, rules, distribution or anything like that. I designed the expansion’s box. Not the box art, the box itself.

Now, some people have come up to me on the street and screamed loudly into my face that, since the Machi Koro: Harbor expansion consists merely of two modestly sized decks of cards, then it could easily have been packaged in an equally modest container, similar to the approach taken with the expansions for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Why, some have even suggested that you could store these components in a sandwich bag… though, I’m not sure why anyone would ever do that.

But all those people are as uninspired as they are correct. You see, Machi Koro is a game all about exploiting forests and fields before they’re all gone, and then transforming those natural resources into commerce-generating franchises. And so, I took the same approach in the expansion’s box design!

In game design, we call that “theme”.

And so, why does the entire expansion fit snugly into just one corner of the box it comes in? Because the box itself continues the theme of transforming nature’s raw materials into disposable, trivial kitch.

And, while I refuse to brag, I will boast that the response among my peers has been magnificent. I even won an award for my box design! Not this thing, no, the box. The oversized box award is an oversized box. What's more, I’ve been commissioned to design an even bigger box for the the game’s next expansion, Machi Koro: Nature, Shut Up.

So remember my box design motto: too much of a good thing can never be a bad thing. Which reminds me that I’ve also been commissioned to come up with thirty-seven more versions of Love Letter before lunch.