I haven't actually done this yet, but I figured I would share my dream solution.
I think the arena boards are the main drawback to the game's portability. So the first thing towards making it more portable would be to get the play mat. I would then store this mat in a
protective tube. I would then use a
yoga back pack as my main transportation device, which should adequately accommodate the playmat, several spellbooks, and a couple of plano boxes of markers and dice. I am not sure which plano boxes would be best for the markers.
I'm actually considering customizing my condition markers to standardize them and make them easier to sort. I already have a 1-inch hole punch and some chip board that I use to make D&D tokens. It'd be a lot of work, which I'm not sure is worth it, but the fact that the markers have different conditions on both sides makes it kind of hard to sort them. Right now, I've got them sorted as follows:
- Damage
- Mana
- Mage Specific + Initiative
- Other Non-Condition Markers (ready, guard, +Melee, etc)
- Condition Markers
For my unused cards, I have them sorted by spell type and then alphabetically in
1600 count card boxes. I'm almost definitely going to make up
some dividers for the card box in the near future. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
As far as sleeves go, I only sleeve the cards in my spellbooks and that is more to help distinguish them from my opponent's than it is to keep them safe (although having safer cards is a nice perk). I would recommend
Dek-Prot sleeves as they are cheap, come in a multitude of colors, and I like that they come in packs of 60 (which is really helpful for other card games, but you'll still probably want 2 packs per spellbook for mage wars).
I also have the rulebooks, combined codex, and FAQ all downloaded on a tablet so that I don't have to carry any physical copies of those around.