Muse is a valuable thing, when you get that muse going you need to squeeze it until the last drops are out there. I think that every time you have a muse you need to treat it as an ice cream truck that is getting away any moment and you really want that ice cream with dulce de leche. So I really hate having a good muse going on just to see it wasted because I don't have the right equipment or pieces or tools to get things done. On the other hand, this is why now I have an armada of pieces, equipment and whatnot.
Now I want to pass the things I learned on to you little, large and medium sized grasshoppers! Let's start with the things I find most essential and go down the list while marking in bold any physical items I find important for game design and prototyping.
Making cards is one of the things I find myself do often. For this you will need a printer. Make that a good quality and efficient printer and more important, one that can take on a sheet of cardboard. I'm talking about simple, white A4 200-250 gsm sheets. You can fit 9 poker or MTG sized cards in there easily. You might want to have either a paper guillotine or at least a cutting surface and a paper knife. It helps to have some software that can take an Excel or similar sheet and turn in into cards - a total time saver, plus your cards are consistent and more beautiful. Check out my other entry on that topic.
If we are already in the card business, have sleeves always ready. I have some transparent ones I use when I need to differentiate cards from their back and some opaque ones. Believe me, hand cut irregular cards feel bad in your hand, but sleeves take care of that in a minute.
Game pieces can be anything you want. I'm sure that during testing any even game by Cool Mini or Not had some ridiculous parts that were later replaced by amazing miniatures. For the sake of this argument, having stuff taken from other games is ok, but I hate breaking games apart. So I would say, if you love designing games and if you are money out of it, buy yourself a wooden pieces set. I own a few by FFG that I managed to get from an overstock of a game store, leftovers from finished legacy games and more. I'm waiting for the wave of finished SeaFall games that will add so many useful wooden pieces to my resources. You can't have enough, you need to have those pieces in several colors. I prefer the usual: blue, red, green and yellow for players and black and white for natural forces. Also, that opens the door for 5 or 6 player games if you are into that. Did you get upgraded components to a game? Place the non upgraded ones with your design resources.
Tiles are tricky for me. This is because you need to have heavy cardboard. Another option a friend taught me was just printing on a 200-250 gsm paper and than using glue spray to make it twice or thrice as thick (I always wanted to use the word thrice). This gives you a ~700 gsm sheet + glue, and that should hold nicely. You will need a good pair of scissors to cut that it in case you are going for hexagons.
Containers, because: "Oh my god, look at the mess". Ziplock bags and bait organizers work best. Get them and watch everything fall into place. Also some cardboard or plastic boxes you get with anything from fancy candy to an internet router can contain a game or two perfectly. Remember those finished legacy games? Keep the box as well. This is basically it for me, I'm sure other designers have other ways of working and different equipment. As it is in any creative process, you need to start somewhere, discard the things that don't work for you and add things that do. Only time and practice will help you get to the final set of things you need in order to get the most out of those muse filled days :) In the picture is my (mostly) wooden piece collection that are not currently in a prototype and cards. oh, so many cards.
