Battlefoam has excellent customer service.

My first order with them went something along the lines of, “I’m boarding a plane to California in X weeks, and I’d like to take my Skaven with me.  Can you have Y at my door by at least the day before?” and, of course, they were able to manage it.

Although my most recent order with them was a little rocky, every other order’s gone smoothly and has seen great customer service.

Because the custom trays are Not Cheap… and because I keep running into a need for custom trays, I tend to overthink their composition.  For example, the Handgunner tray from my last order:

Those shapes have worked out fabulously for Handgunners, FYI.  The layout, on the other hand was close but not exactly viable (despite what I thought were careful measurements), so they had to make some changes. The final product has totally worked out, but deviates a smidge from the above.

This time, I had a bunch of stuff that needed to go into 2.5″ trays.  Rather than overthink the layout (because it didn’t really pay off last time, and because all that careful fiddling just delays my ordering), I said, “Screw it,” traced my shapes, typed up some notes, and e-mailed them away.

Those notes got longer, and longer, though, until I decided that I just had to share them here.

Where I’m going with all of this is 1) I’m aware that I can be a pain in the ass and 2) Battlefoam has excellent customer service.  If they didn’t, I wouldn’t have placed this order;  I have a pretty reasonable expectation that they’ll pull this thing together.  That’s significant, and merits noting.

Anyway, here’s the order:

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Re: Order #XXXXXXX

First off, I need to apologize: I can’t help but overthink these orders, and this isn’t an exception. Sorry.

Overview of the shapes:

Shape	Description	Flippable?	Quantity	Depth	Tray?	Notes
A	Warrior Priest	FALSE	1	1.25″(1.5″)	1
B	Standard Bearer	FALSE	1	1.25″(1.5″)	1
C	Outrider(A)	FALSE	7	1.25″(1.5″)	1
D	Outrider(B)	FALSE	3	1.25″(1.5″)	1
E	Hurricanum Top	N/A	1	2.5″	2	Reusable.4″ diameter Circle. Ignore the trace.
F	Hurricanum Cart	TRUE	1	2.5″	2	Reusable?
G	Luminark Cart	TRUE	1	2.5″	2	Reusable?
H	Luminark Top	TRUE	1	2.5″	2	Reusable?
I		TRUE	1	2.5″	?	Complication #1
J	Helblaster	TRUE	1-2	2.5″	?	Resuable.  Complication #1
K	Helstorm	TRUE	1-2	2.5″	?	Resuable.  Complication #1
L	Demigryph1	FALSE	1	2.5″	3	Complication #2
M	Demigryph2	FALSE	1	2.5″	3	Complication #2
N	Demigryph3	FALSE	1	2.5″	3	Complication #2
O	Demigryph4	FALSE	1	2.5″	3	Complication #2
P	Cannon	N/A	1-2	2.5″	?	Resuable.Complication #1
Q	Mortar	N/A	1-2	2.5″	?	Resuable.  Complication #1

Tray 1 – 1.25″ deep. Since I think that’s not an option (‘sokay), 1.5″ deep.
– A x1
– B x1
– C x7
– D x3

Fill the rest of the space with 1″ x 2 3/4″ shapes. Heck, if you can make ~half the tray look like your BF-BF-DHE tray, that’d be fabulous.

Tray 2 – 2.5″ deep
– E x1 – (I don’t know why I traced this. Just use a 4″ diameter circle, please.)
– F x1
– G x1
– H x1

Tray 3 – 2.5″ deep
– L x1
– M x1
– N x1
– O x1

Some of these shapes (F, G, H, I, J, K) are flippable. If flipping them makes things fit better: great.

Complication #1
Please add Shapes I, J, K, P, and Q to either Tray 2 or Tray 3 as possible. I’m not picky.

On the off chance there’s not enough room for everything across the two trays, that’s okay. The order in which I’d like these added, just in case: I, J, P, P, K, J, K, Q, Q

In the unlikely chance there’s room left on Tray 2 or Tray 3, just fill any remaining space with rectangles. I’m sure I can find something to use them for.

Finally, if for some extremely unlikely case you’d be able to fit E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O onto a single tray (which I doubt, but just in case), forget J, K, P, Q: I’ll just take the two trays (Tray 1 & the hypothetical Uber Tray 2/3).

Complication #2
I don’t even know if this is possible, but it can’t hurt to ask, right?

You’ll note that Shapes L, M, N, O are drawn in both red and blue. In a perfect world, the red shapes are 2.25″ deep, and the blue shapes 2.5″ deep. Since I’m quite confident that’s not an option, I’d love to get the material that fills those red shapes (or, failing that, the material that fills the entire shape) and I can saw away to make it work. I know I’ve gotten filler material for shapes before (in the BF-BF-1SB1PF tray) so I don’t think I’m taking crazy pills.

These Demigryphs come on an annoyingly wide base for the model.

Finally: several of these shapes are, I think, generic enough to be reusable by other folks and aren’t currently in your Custom Tray Generator. I know I’d have loved for them to be there, and if they make your lives easier and make up for the hassle that is this order: great! Shapes J, K, P, and Q are all Empire War Machine shapes; totally usable. Shapes E, F, G, H are all Empire Hurricanum and Luminark parts. They should be reusable by anyone, assuming they’re smart and magnetize the weapon components instead of fixing them in place. So, maybe reusable, maybe not.

Again, big apologies for the fussiness of this order! Let me know if you have any questions or need any clarification!

Thanks!

Rush

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See what I mean?

Like I said: this was involved enough that I felt I needed to share it… and point out how it’s a testament to Battlefoam that I actually expect them to make it work.

Last night, I finally sat down and started mapping out a Battlefoam order for my Daemons.  I’ve been putting it off because it’s… not a small investment, but I’ve reached the end of my rope with dealing with the crappy transport solution I have for my Soul Grinders.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Battlefoam gives you too much power over what they do for you.  It’s not an understatement to say that the bulk of the reason I’ve put this off as long as I have is option paralysis: so many different things I can do in so many different ways and, because this stuff is as expensive as it is, I want to get it perfect.

I finally resigned myself to shoot for as good as possible rather than perfect and got the ball rolling.

The driving force behind doing all of this was storing the two Soul Grinders.  Bill assured me that the Soul Grinder trays would handle them just fine, but I’ve also got two Bloodthirsters I need to handle, too.  Given that all four of them are just at about 6″ even, that means I need to fit all four of them in a single tray (or I’ve got 12″ of foam dedicated to four models).  This might be a bit of a longshot.  Furthermore, I’ve also got two Bloodcrushers w/ Icons that are 5″ tall: in a perfect world, I’d fit them in the same tray, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I wasn’t particularly confident that the generic Chaos Daemon tray would work.  Plaguebearers, maybe, but not Bloodletters with their Hellblades pointing out all over the place.  So, I did some tracing:

And realized I was being dumb.  When you do shapes that custom, you’ve always got to put the right mini back in the right slot, which is easier said than done.  I fell in this trap when I used pluck foam: by the time I really picked up steam, I’d learned that it was much easier to just use regular shapes that I could fit my minis in.  So, instead, I measured out the boxes most of them would fit in:

1.25″ x 2″ for most of them.  A few at 1.25″ x3″ and 1.74″ x4″ for the icons. Just as well I didn’t try relying on the generic tray, since that’s got a lot of 1″ x 1.75″ and 1.5″ x 2.25″ slots (plus it 1-1.5″ thick, and these trays need to be 2″ thick).  That one tray will hold my 25 Bloodletters, with room for another ~9, plus 2 more icons.

Next up are the Flesh Hounds.  They’re basically Terminator bases, which is easy, right?  Except they poke a little bit out at each end, and the custom terminator shape doesn’t really support that.  So, I had to draw up a custom shape that’s basically room for a 40mm base with some notches at either end (sort of like a Kermit the Frog’s eye, though with different proportions).  This tray also needs room for Karanak and the four objective markers (terminator bases with no overhang).  Since I wanted to check the viablility of this, I also mapped out a tray for this.

I’ll be including instructions to replace the 3″ x 2″ ovals with the Flesh Hound shapes, fitting in as many as possible.  This tray’s also got to be 2″ tall, thanks to leaping Flesh Hounds and Karanak being… not small.

That covers everything, except the Daemon Princes and Bloodcrushers.  I’ll have eight Bloodcrushers (as soon as I finish the second quartet) and three Daemon Princes.  The Crushers are 3″ tall, the Daemon Princes 3.5″ tall.  We should be able to fit six  (because we want to try to fit the two Icons in the deep tray) to eight ‘Crushers and the three princes in a single tray.

Unfortunately, this means I have 6″ + 3.5″ + 2″ + 2″ worth of foam.  That’s 13.5″ of foam: 14.5 inches if you account for the .25″ padding that’s the bottom of the tray.  Fuck.  Not only does this mean I can’t even think about going with the 12″ deep  PACK 720, I’m going to have problems fitting this into the PACK 1520.  Spread across both sub-bags, it holds 22″ of foam, but that’s with a 14″ sub-bag and an 8″ sub-bag.  At the very least, I’d be nice to fit everything in one sub-bag (and leave the other one at home… but that isn’t going to happen.

It has just occurred to me that I might be able to lay the Daemon Princes down, in which case I could do the Bloodcrushers/Princes with a 3″ tray instead of the 3.5″ tray, which would make everything fit in the bottom bag… I’ll have to trace them out and see.  I’m not optimistic that I’d be able to do that and fit everything onto the tray that I need to if I do that, however.

Of course, that assumes I can fit the Bloodcrusher Icons into the tray with the Soul Grinders and Bloodthirsters.  If I can’t, I’ve got to upgrade the 3.5″ tray to a 5″ tray.  Blech.  Then I’ve got 16″ of tray.  Of course, down the line if/when I pick up a third Soul Grinder, I’ll need to cram in another 6″ tray, which will be just about right. (Though I’ll be .25″ short on room?)

I was concerned that, if I went with the 1520, I’d be boned and be stuck with 8.5″-9″ of tray I wouldn’t know what to do with, but then I realized that I can just order the bag empty and the trays separate (as opposed to the bag with custom trays), which would let me focus on just what I need and would save me ~$45.  If I had two more custom trays that I knew I needed, then it would make sense to get the thing filled with foam (even if there were a few inches I didn’t know what to do with), since they’re $30 a pop.  Maybe I just go ahead and order the tray for the third Soul Grinder now.

Plus, I’m going to order a PACK MINI to hold RPG minis; I asked last night if I could get it without the hobby tools tray (because it’s ridiculous), and was told that I absolutely can, which is great.

I’d planned on putting the order in today, but now I feel like I need to investigate laying down the Daemon Princes, first.  So, maybe this afternoon/evening when I’m home and can put my hands on them.

(I don’t know how this blog post will read: I went back and thought out loud about eight times through it… like I said, “option paralysis.”)