In my second year of university, a bunch of friends and myself included started playing the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG again. For me, it had been over eight years since I last played it. The game moves quickly in rules and card effects, it seems! And with it, a lot of new cards came out. My current main (and favourite) deck is Yang Zing. Its core mechanic is an archetype of Wyrms that Synchro Summon strong monsters through chaining effects, and its lore is based on the nine sons of the dragon. The artwork is simply superb, as a bonus! I came across this video by GYugioh on how to make a deckbox and was inspired to make my own.

To start with, I needed to measure the dimensions of a single card, and then a stack of cards. I then drew out a guide and the template shape.

I ended up using mount board for this project; not as bendable as cardboard (at least you can score it lightly to bend in straight lines), but easier to draw designs on. I drew out the template and cut out the shape with a craft knife.

Where the main body of the deckbox would be, I drew on a design in pencil and coloured it using Prismacolor markers. My design of choice was Chiwen, Light of the Yang Zing as it was the first Tuner monster in the archetype and I love its design so much.

It was at this point that I had realised… I had messed up in making the template. See, because I used mount board, it needed extra space to bend. Bending the board sharply resulted in cracks appearing on the surface. Thus at the final hurdle, my deckbox wasn’t actually going to be a deckbox. Here, I improvised; I cut off the lid and kept just the body of the original design.

The tabs were then superglued together to form a rectangular box with an opening. The base didn’t have any flaps to cover the gaps though, due to my massive oversight…

At this point, I had come this far to make a deckbox, but now I was missing a lid! I made a replacement square lid in the same fashion as the box and then added a design onto it. The design I chose was Yang Zing Path, because it featured Chiwen on the card as a meteor. However, I could not bring myself to draw Chiwen again (seriously complicated design!), and the markers wouldn’t have been able to colour it as they would have leaked and mixed together, so I left that part out.

I also made some cuts into the main part of the lid. Why? Well, I wanted to make sure my deckbox would be really identifiable and to deter people from taking it – so I tied a ribbon to it. It’s white because Synchro monsters are white cards. Also it’s rather convenient that I did not draw Chiwen again, because it would have been covered by the ribbon!

This time, I made sure to proportion the lid correctly so that it would fit, haha.

And in the end, the box turned out to be a near-perfect fit for my deck and its accompanying side deck. Now I know how the process goes, I’ll be more prepared when I make future deckboxes! Why am I making more? Well, I have other decks too that I would like to box up!

Materials: Mount board, Prismacolor markers, white ribbon, craft knife