The day I stopped sorting board game pieces by color and started sorting by shape

I spent years organizing my Settlers of Catan pieces by color, until I tried to find the orange settlement in a pile of orange roads during a game last Friday. Now I sort everything by shape first and color second, which saves me about 10 minutes of digging per game night. Has anyone else found a weird system that actually works better?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade_hernandez1mo ago

Right? That's exactly how I felt when I finally gave up on sorting my Ticket to Ride train cards by color and started doing it by destination city instead. I used to think I was being so organized with the color piles, but then I'd be scrambling to find the right purple card while everyone waited on me. Now I just stack everything by the city name and throw colors in wherever they land, and somehow my games go way smoother because I can spot "Chicago" way faster than I can pick out a specific shade of blue. It makes no sense on paper but it works, so I'm just rolling with it and judging no one for their weird sorting methods.

paul1171mo ago

Hold up, I gotta say you're close but you're mixing two different things lol. The train cards in Ticket to Ride are actually just colors, they don't have city names on them at all. The destination tickets are the ones with city names like Chicago and you draw those separately from the train card deck. So you can't really sort train cards by destination city because they just say "purple" or "blue" on them lmao. That said, I totally get what you mean about finding a system that works even if it sounds weird. For me, I just shove all my train cards in one messy pile and grab whichever I need, no sorting at all. It drives my buddy crazy when we play but hey, whatever works for you is the right way to do it. Just wanted to clear that up so you don't confuse anyone new to the game haha.