The TurtleBox3D Marvel Zombies insert finally makes CMON’s ridiculous Kickstarter playable

If you’re a dedicated Zombicide fan like I am, your house is probably chock full of boxes upon boxes of Kickstarter expansions filled with beautiful CMON miniatures. Having said that, no matter how much you love the game, I bet you don’t play Zombicide anywhere near enough — and I know exactly why, and I have the perfect solution for you!

Let’s face it, CMON’s Kickstarters are outrageously pumped up with expansions and extra content that each comes in its own box, with its own crappy plastic insert, often embedded inside another box inside the box and so on. With specific respect to Marvel Zombies, this means that if you want to play with (or against) specific heroes, you have a huge overhead in setup time, not to mention a need for lots of space as you unbox things and move these huge boxes around.

There’s no first party solution for this, and there will no doubt be people out there who wish to retain all their box art and perhaps don’t consider space to be a premium issue, but I didn’t buy this £500+ Kickstarter just to look at it, and this is where having a quality insert comes into play. I’ve used a few options for Zombicide games in the past, with 3D printed inserts the only choice really for these larger games.

For my Undead or Alive pledge, I used a Tinkering Paws 3D printed insert which is quite good, and in doing so I’ve managed to consolidate the base game, stretch goals and all smaller box expansions down into just the two large core boxes. There’s no major downside to the Tinkering Paws option, but the insert they do for Marvel Zombies is very expensive. 

Aside from price, the one thing I don’t like about my Tinkering Paws insert is that it uses a “slot” system into which characters have to be slid — this is fine for zombies and other creatures that are mechanically the same, but for characters, it’s annoying because to find a character at the bottom of a slot, you’ll need to take all the others out, plus potentially twist and turn others depending on where there arms and features are. If an insert doesn’t reduce fiddliness like this, then in some ways you might as well stick with your original boxes.

Anyway, it was these factors that led me to want a different insert — and it wasn’t long before I found this fantastic looking option from TurtleBox3D. At £185, this option is priced at a similar level to the Tinkering Paws option, but in my opinion the product offers a number of significant benefits. In addition, we’ve partnered with TurtleBox3D to bring you a discount when you use the code “BIGBOSSBATTLE.”

By way of full disclosure, I want you to know that I paid in full for my insert.

This product basically reduces your overall box footprint down to the two core boxes and the stretch goals box. That means you can get rid of your five large expansion boxes (excluding the Galactus model but with room for the Silver Surfer and relevant cards and tokens), plus your artists box and your plastic tokens box. 

For me this space saving was huge, but in addition I wanted to increase the playability of the game, since the whole point of Marvel Zombies over other Zombicide games is that you can just grab your favourite heroes and get stuck in. TurtleBox3D support this process by creating an insert that stacks with the miniatures accessible in an “open-faced” way. That means no miniatures being slid to the bottom of large stacks, and each one even has a named (and colour coded) slot for the hero and zombie hero variants.

Enemies such as brutes, walkers, S.H.I.E.L.D troopers and so on come in two different “cubes” that feature magnetised opening mechanisms. These do have sliders, but that doesn’t matter at all since all the models within them have the same mechanical functionality in game. There’s room for all three sentinels (plus Giant Man) in a dedicated corner, and there are printed organisers for each of your card types including the large hero cards and all smaller cards.

I had no issues with my TurtleBox3D insert when it arrived, but I did exchange some comms with the owner (Atilla) before shipping to confirm some features and the overall timeline, and I would say the comms were an absolute pleasure that left me feeling confident enough to place my order. TurtleBox3D is a 5 star seller on Etsy with over 1,000 reviews, and you’ll see others inserts for games like Nemesis which might also appeal to you.

In closing — this is sort of a paid review (because we may receive some of our money back) — but I was willing to invest my own money in this product because it has achieved what I wanted almost perfectly. Marvel Zombies is now significantly more playable, and even if no one ever uses the code above, I’m still very happy with the purchase I made. Most importantly, I now have loads of space back, and when my kids ask me to play Marvel Zombies, I don’t have to distract them with a game that sets up easier.

If you like the look of the TurtleBox3D insert for Marvel Zombies, don’t forget to use the code BIGBOSSBATTLE when you visit TurtleBox3D on Etsy.