If, in a perfect world, after sometime, the whole world will know of Codex game, and there is tournament scene everywhere and it’s a thing, and everybody is an expert in Codex…,
Do you still need Codex Binders? I mean, it helps a beginner a lot by properly arranging their cards. But if you’re a veteran, I think you don’t need to see all your cards. I think you can just put your cards in a deck box. And if there will be a tournament scene, are binders required? I mean the binders could take space if there are a lot of players.
I could imagine going to a tournament scene, bringing just 1 deckbox, without a binder. In it are cards for your 3 specs, tokens, dice, and maybe a paper board layout.
To me, it is slower to flip through a deck of 72 cards than to flip to the right page and pull them out. I also prefer packing them up in a binder to clean up a game.
I think a binder speeds up play during a game, if only marginally. Binder is slower to clean up after the game is complete, but I think on balance the binder is better overall.
Also, it is possible to store everything except dice inside the binder, including the paper board layouts and tokens. A binder and a dice bag would be relatively little space.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see people run binderless at tournaments. I’ve seen some people play this way during testing, might have been @mallorean_thug, but lack of official binders might have been a factor there.
As long as you know all your cards really well and since it’s a tournament I’m assuming you do and you have your stack of cards sorted neatly I can definitely see people preferring playing this way at tournaments. There will probably be some that will prefer the binders though.
Binders are an important part of the visual identity of Codex. It’s the name of the game !
Kinda unique to use a binder during a card-game, isn’t it ?
IMO having a binder greatly improves the experience of a game as (contrary to other deckbuilding games such as Yu-Gi-Oh ! and Pokemon TCG) every card in Codex has a gold cost, and it’s quite difficult to remember all gold costs even for a good player ( I often ask my opponent how much cost his ultimates during a game before playing Reputable Newsman).
What is more, having a binder greatly helps in counting cards (especially tokens) at the end of a game to be sure no card dropped under the table.
Codex is cool, codex with codices is even greater !