Almanac: The Crystal Peaks Components Overview and Impressions
Large and unnatural board game boxes really suck to store, and I’ll openly admit I haven’t purchased games in the past simply because of their sheer size. Almanac: The Crystal Peaks probably would have been one of those games, but after seeing someone playing it at GenCon 2025, the table presence was so impressive I had to try it. Lucky for me that Kolossal Games reached out and provided a copy for me to review, so let’s take a look at the components.
Almanac: The Crystal Peaks has a TON of cardboard, so get ready to punch, punch, and punch some more. Thankfully, it all comes out of the punch board quite easily, and even after punching out over 200 cardboard pieces, I hadn’t damaged any of them – that is pretty impressive, and speaks to the quality punch board that Kolossal Games used.
The reason for the awkward box size is due to the included game book. The book is wire ring bound, and includes tons of beautifully detailed and really colourful pages. The book has a plastic feel, almost like a dry erase board. I’m glad to see that they didn’t opt for a paper book because based on what I’ve seen of the gameplay, that would tear and wear out pretty quickly. The giant book feels great to use, and is the perfect size when playing with 4 players.
Let’s get to what I think will be the most contentious part of this production: the insert. Listen, I think inserts should be standard in board games as it makes setting up and cleaning up games so much easier. Again, it might sound ridiculous to say it, but I’ve actually avoided purchasing games that don’t have inserts, especially large games where you sort tons of pieces. At first glance, I thought The Crystal Peaks had a great insert, but after punching and sorting the pieces, I noticed a few flaws.
To understand this better, it’s worth noting that the game guides you through the book, allowing your caravan to stop at a variety of locations. Each location operates differently than the last, and most require tokens from the box to help tell the story of that location. The token wells in the box each hold tokens from a variety of different pages, which means you’ll need to dig through the wells to find what you need. On top of that, one of the wells is overfilled (see the turtle shells above) and I always feel like I’m playing Tetris in that well just to keep it all fitting.
What I completely understand is the only way this gets better is if the box was bigger, which a) goes against my desire for boxes to be standardized; and b) it makes the game that much more expensive.
So while I’m annoyed by this insert, I commend Kolossal Games for including one at all, and even though I need to sift through multiple pages worth of tokens to find what I need, at least I’m not sifting through a box filled with (maybe labeled) baggies.
When this gets to the table, though, it looks really cool. It was what made me want to review this game in the first place, and I cannot wait to get this tabled in the near future!
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Article By Adam Roffel
