Review: Army-Case.com (Feldmaster) Victory Case Transport Solution (4 out of 5 stars)

Recently Feldmaster created and successfully completed an Indiegogo Campaign (Recent Indiegogo Campaign) to fund the creation of the Army-Case or A-Case, and I was lucky to get in on this and get my hands on a Victory Case.
Often I am interested in how an item rates, so below is my review of the Victory Case.

What you get:
  1. Lightweight and durable powder coated aluminium black frame
  2. 3 x Powder Coated iron black shelves
  3. High Quality Polyester Bag in chosen color with Velcro strap for the patches
  4. Accessory pocket 
  5. 60 x powerful neodym magnets (6×2 mm) 
Pros:

The case is lightweight, easy to assemble, metallic with magnetic mounting for your miniatures.

Lightweight - Even though the case is mainly metal, due to the cut out framing, it is surprisingly light.

Material -  The Victory case is a multi-shelf system made of solid powder coated metal. I believe Americans might want to equate this to Kynar PVDF coating, but truthfully powder coating is a far more impact resistant than Kynar, depending on the process. Powder Coating has been used for over 20 years in Europe and AsiaPacific, so you can trust this item is very solid. The Polyester bag is a good fit and appears to be of comparable manufacture. It has slight amount of padding which is good at reducing shock impact to the miniatures being carried inside. The handle is double X-stitched, so it should not fall apart very easily. The shoulder strap serves its purpose, I wouldn't recommend carrying the case all day, over the shoulder, mainly because it will be uncomfortable for your shoulder after a few hours.

There is a velcro, hook and loop band on the front, so you have the ability to attach a patch/label to designate/individualize your case.

Remember folks, all things fail and/or fall-apart if you don't look after it. This case is no different. I wouldn't recommend driving the SUV over it or throwing out a 4th story office window.

Assembly - The case is pretty ingenious in its assembly. The tolerance fit means there is no need for screws, glues are other fixatives. It all locks together snuggly, sides first, then top and bottom. Once assembled, just pop into the supplied carry bag and it becomes a solid and compact case. Below is a graphic of what I am talking about.


Pretty ingenious hey ?? 

Use
A few of you may be asking, where's the foam?  Well as mentioned,  this system is magnetized and doesn't use foam. You simply attach magnets to the base of you miniatures, and guess what? Army-case.com supplies 60 magnets with your purchase. All you need is either a hot glue gun and/or a lot of superglue to stick the magnets underneath the base of your miniatures. Et Voila. They'll magnetize to the metal shelves. The magnets are the strong rare-earth type, so they hold very well. I will say, if you drop the case from around 1 meter or 3+ foot onto a hard surface, like a concrete floor, the magnets probably won't hold under the force of the impact. But I haven't checked, as I mentioned before, take care of your equipment.
If you swap to a magnetized solution, you will no longer snap that bayonet or Dark Eldar/Chaos spike or Tyranid claw that gets snagged in your foam today. Bellisarius Craw is no longer such a pain in the backside to transport. Just attach two magnets to his base, snap to the shelf and off you go. No more agonizing over the flimsy servo skulls, worrying about the trailing mechadendrites, or losing sleep over the mechanical crab protruding from the front. On that note, Celestine or Knight Venator or Celestant Prime miniature with their flimsy and spikey wings become less of a problem to transport, because your only concern becomes whether they have enough space on your shelf and clearance to the frame.



There is a pocket on the side where you can insert your small form-factor rule book (I believe A5 format), maybe a 7inch tablet would fit in there too.

Great looking, lightweight, easy to assemble, simple to use. So what's the catch?

Cons:

We'll simply put, this is great for rank and file (Kings of War, 9th Ed., Saga,etc.) or skirmish (Malifaux, Infinity, etc.) style games where there are typically 5-20 miniatures. Rank and file games where multiple blocks of similar miniatures on 25mm or smaller bases also works well. GW/ForgeWorld style Vehicle, Monstrous Creatures and/or large scenic base characters aren't ideal for this type of case.

Why?

The Victory Army-Case is designed to fit up to 360 x 20mm based miniatures. So when you equate that out to 32mm GW bases, I find you have room for 96 foot slogging miniatures. So this is still a great solution for a foot-slogger army. 40mm GW Terminator bases and bike pill/oval style GW bases will also work, however the density of models will be lower. Note: Your Characters, focal models or any miniature that is a little larger, taller, has a back banner, vexilla and/or carries a weapon in an outstretched hand, well they might just not fit into the fixed standard shelf spacing. You will have to remove a shelf or two to fit this style of miniature, and your overall number/density of transportable model count will reduce by around 32 x 32mm bases miniatures per shelf you remove. Vehicles and Knight Titans are pretty much not able to be transported. Army-case.com has a Hermes case in which vehicle miniatures maybe more suited, unfortunately I didn’t get my hands on one of those. But Knight Titan, Kharybdis Assault Claw, Carnifex, Flying Hive Tyrant, the humble Drop Pod and GW BloodThirster, Magnus, Celestant Prime sized miniatures will probably need a different solution. Additionally, due to the magnetized nature of the case, you may be required to base your vehicles or larger miniatures and use some stronger magnets than those supplied, either that or a bucket-load of the supplied magnets.

Though the bags are padded, and metal is still fairly thin and due to their construction they can be bent out of shape, easily, if sat upon or crushed. Again take care of your equipment and this shouldn't be a problem.

Given there is no glue, screws, rivets, etc. involved in the assembly, the shelves tend rattle around in the case. This can get annoying if you're driving an hour or so to your FLGS. The original cases shipped as part of the Indiegogo campaign  came with extra pieces, like half trays and magnetized tray liners. The general release doesn't ship with these with these. Is this a problem? Well, actually it's not a problem, more a nice to have.

The magnetized tray liners add an amount of rigidity to the shelves. They magnetize the shelves to the frame, so they don't rattle about as much. Also they enable the use of the half-shelves.


The half shelves are not a mandatory item, but they do make set up really quick and easy. Say you have a block 10man squad, if you store it on a half shelf, you can just simply slide that shelf out and start using the miniatures. With rank and file style games, this could act as your movement tray. Pretty useful, if you think outside of it serving purely as a storage solution.


Given these items are not included with the cases, you can purchase these items separately if you email info@army-case.com.

Cost:
The Victory case is comparable to some higher cost solutions at $USD129.00, not including shipping.
KR Multicase continues to be the most effective solution, followed distantly by Battlefoam (TIP: buy Battlefoam at Convention discounts or during their Black Friday sales)
TableWar Display Full-Tower is the industry leader in build quality and cost. Those cases are really the pinnacle of what is possible.

The Army-Case.com Victory case is most comparable to the TableWar Display Half-Tower case. The Victory case is capable of a few more miniatures, as it has one more shelf to utilize. Shipping costs may be the deciding factor. Army-case.com is a European company and often that can impact your decision. So you'll have to trade-off build quality and cost versus higher capacity for a true comparison.

Summary:
These points aside, the Army-case.com Victory Case is very versatile, lightweight, smart looking, easy to assemble and good to use. I would recommend this for smaller skirmish type games, GW Kill Teams and/or FW Zone Mortalis set-ups. Larger types of wargaming may not be as suited to this style of case.
I would recommend getting yourself a hot-glue gun, too. A 6 inch glue stick glued 192 x 32mm based miniatures in about two hours. Done, dusted and I don't have to worry about it anymore.

🌟🌟🌟🌟☆
I recommend this storage solution and would give the Victory Case a solid 4 out of 5 stars. If Feldmaster/Army-case.com could work out how to give more shelf spacing options, include the magnetized tray liners and half trays as standard, at minimal cost increase, it would bump this rating to a 5 out of 5. I have four of these cases, and split the 40K Dark Vengeance starter set out into one, Horus Heresy Troops into two others. And I will likely put painted boardgame miniatures (Zombicide, Journey: Wrath of Demons, Mice and Mystics) into the fourth.




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