From SylvainR: Challenge Wrap Up & The Art of Storage

Another incredible Challenge for me. Last year, I filled 12 trays with 6mm WW2 miniatures, and this year I filled only 11, but then added 3 trays of 28mm D&D figurines "on the side" to populate the role playing adventures requested by my family. All in all, I gathered 1282.5 points.

My precious...

I want to reiterate my thanks to the Snow Lord, the minions and the challengers. I want to thank the Monday Crew for being so good with me. I screwed up a few times and was only met with patience. I did a better job this year at commenting on other challengers' submissions, but have not yet reach the level I was aiming for. I will now spending the rest of the year preparing miniatures and, most importantly, creating storage for my newly painted little treasures.

Before signing off, I would like to take this opportunity to showcase the often neglected art of storage, which explains my obsession for trays.

When I started wargaming, back in the 80s, members of my group were simply storing their miniatures in small plastic containers, like the ones used for cough drops or the "tank traps" sold by GHQ. If this system would resist water damage very well, it was not great at all when it was time to take out minis for the game, or worse, when it was time to put them back in storage. Without proper identification, only the owner would know which mini goes in which container. That was my storage system for many years...

I purpose-built my first storage box sometimes at the end of the 1980s for my WW2 6mm Soviet army. That box is now lost. In 1994, I built my second storage box for an army of Epic Orks from a card-board container for envelops. This kind of storage had the advantage of making set up and clean up quick, but there were two big disadvantages:

- Each box was unique and different from the others. See, for example, the companion storage box for the Gargants, below. Plus each tray had to be built to specific dimensions. Thus making this kind of storage was very time consuming.

- Most problematic, the top trays were not well designed to carry miniatures on long distance, as the content would invariably shift.

The next "evolution" in my art of storage was to get rid of the odd-size boxes and instead make extensive use of the humble "banker's box". This was a big step forward. I even built my storage cupboards to nicely fit a height of 2 banker's boxes per shelf.

Another important "evolution" was to make more compartments within each tray, to avoid miniatures shifting around. Below is an example for WW2 15mm Soviet tanks. Note that I recycled the foams from the blister packs to make the compartments. Each tray is half the size of the box, as it nicely fits a company of 10 tanks.

Sometimes, I had to build bigger trays, especially for scenery. I then need to carve handles on each end to be able to pull the tray out of the box.

Once, I had to build vertical trays to fit my collection of Napoleonic sail ships.

For 28mm, I simply buy commercially available foam trays that I pile in a banker's box:

When I started my WW2-6mm project, I knew I would need lots of storage, thus lots of trays. I asked my good friend ByronM, who runs Northern Lights Terrain and Game Supplies (a sponsor of this year's Challenge) to cut MDF boards for me in order to create the trays you see below. Using cardboard, I then add a bottom and compartments. At about 2cm high each, 20 trays can fit in a box. Each tray can hold up to 55 miniatures (but trays are rarely full). Thus about 1,000 miniatures (in theory) would fit in a box. Including what I have painted during this last Challenge, I now have 4 boxes of 6mm miniatures.

The next evolutionary step was to develop a classification system because, at 6mm, there are lots of miniatures in an army. First, I made sure that the content of each tray would be precisely identified, as you can see below. Please, also note the color coding on the right side. Blue, red, green for combat units, purple for recce, white for support, etc.

I also wanted to make sure elements would not get mixed up. I would not want to see a Panzer IV F1 among my Panzer IV F2. Under the base, I write a code identifying in which tray belongs each miniature. In the image below, both under the base of a miniature and on the side of the tray, you can read the code "BR-D-01" (British - Desert - Tray number 1). You will also note that there is some coding on the side of the separators. This was done before I started bleeding the coding colors on top of the bases. Now it's not necessary anymore.

Inside the compartment of each tray, I drew sections and identified the content with the name and color coding of each miniature. So now my friends can easily help me put away miniatures at the end of the game :-).

I hope this little show and tell was entertaining.

Thanks for reading and see you next year!