Battlefoam Magna Rack Review - 720 and 1520 bags (img heavy)
May 12, 2020 1:17:37 GMT
hivefleetkerrigan and deedus like this
Post by timcz on May 12, 2020 1:17:37 GMT
So I’ll start by saying, I’m not good at writing reviews of anything, but I’ll give it a crack. Most of this will be written regards to tyranids transport and not other armies, mainly because I haven’t used it for other armies.
TLDR – I love the 720 bag with racks, but get the slider racks. The 1520 is fantastic, but its huge. It’s basically a medium sized suitcase.
So I had the original dilemma that I wanted to be able to move my nids around to the local game stores, or for longer car rides etc. I wasn’t considering airplanes or anything like that for travels to bigger tournaments when I made my purchase decision. A lot of people had suggested for nids the easiest way to transport them (due to all the spindley and spikey bits) was to magnetise them, and put them into a box with a sheet of metal glued to the bottom. I love making stuff, but I was thinking about how much I spent on all the models, then im probably better off buying something proper, rather than something that I just made myself. Looked at a few options around foam as well, but came across the magna racks and looked like the way to go. So I bought a rack package (had legs, end caps etc), a foam gaunt & genestealer tray (as I wasn’t going to magnetise those), some extra leg variants and a 720 bag.
I’m in Australia, so everything costs a little more over here and we don’t really have anywhere to check stuff out prior, so I didn’t have much to go off besides the bare minimum on the internet. They have sales all the time, so my suggestion is, wait until they have a sale as you’ll at least save the equiv of your international shipping cost in the original purchase price.
Ill start with the bag first. It feels really sturdy and will hold its shape without anything inside of it (racks or foam wise). It has a lot of those molle straps sewed onto it so you can add all kinds of accessories pouches to it etc, and it has a large pouch on the front face (think Codex size), and another smaller pouch on the face of that (think 7th ed mini rulebook size). I don’t use either of these (because as we all know how much (please do not swear) you need to play these days so usually have a small backpack with me) but they feel really well made, similar to the bag. The bag itself unzips so the top and front section are accessible. You can see the dimensions on the site, but internally its ballpark 30x30x40cm. You can throw a number of racks in there in any combo that you like, but ive set mine up to use a 6” for monsters (fits trygon and flyrant with no issues) and slightly taller stuff (like neurothropes etc), a 3” for smaller guys (warriors, hive guard), and then space for one of the foam trays on top. I find this setup pretty good (but ill go into that more later).
The racks themselves are really well built as well. I had mine before the new slider ones came out, and if I had the option now to choose which I would definitely be buying the sliders (and have done since). Yes you do lose some small level of capacity on the tray itself, but I find the fact that I can pull the tray out (particularly on the narrower 3” section), take on/off and set up everything with a bit more precision on the tray means its not much of a trade off in space. Prior to that I was having to kind of crouch down, and slide things along the trays as I put it in. Plus it makes for a handy tray to just move stuff around on. In terms of space, I can put on pretty easily a maxed squad of warriors, a prime, 9 rippers, 6 hive guard and still have room for more. See below for a few pictures that show the difference in the racks, and the amount of stuff you can pile onto them (note that these are the slider trays). Apologies for the unpainted models!
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(left is older design, and right is the new slider design)
Construction wise, the racks are great too. They’re a hard plastic, with a metal sheet on them. They don’t warp, are weighted and built really well, but they are a little prone to scratching from the magnets when you slide them along sometimes. But that’s ok. It’s only an aesthetic thing, and doesn’t ruin the trays at all.
My main gripe with the system is, once you’ve placed the legs in the trays, each other, the end caps on etc… theyre really really hard to get out. So if I wanted to change the combination of how its set up, it can be a real pain in the ass. So much so that I don’t even do it really. The setup I have currently works for me at this size bag, so it’s likely not to change in a hurry. Having a flyrant and 720 bag does generally limit the options as you basically need that 6” tray, and then you don’t have much to work with above unless you go two small trays, and then most won’t fit in height wise. If you were using a different army without models that are so tall, then for sure you could set up a few more racks inside. Tanks and vehicles, im not really sure how we’ll theyd go on a magnet tray, so I think a foam insert would work better for them. So – the setup that im finding works for me now is that ill run my two trays as they are as described above, and then I’ll stick the genestealer foam on top for a squad of those boys, and then I carry a citadel case (the middle sized one) for all the gaunts (as the foam only holds 38). Its not ideal, as I’m now taking a backpack, 720 bag, and a citadel battlecase.
At that point, my brain kind of got to thinking “why am I taking 2 bags, when I could just take one” – so next time there was a sale, I picked up some of the slider racks, another gaunt tray, and the 1520 bag. First impressions when it arrived was “man this thing is big!” I could easily fit more than a few racks in it, as well as few foam trays comfortably. Construction wise it’s the same as the other bag, just bigger. It has wheels and a handle that slides in and out exactly like a suitcase. I haven’t actually taken it anywhere as yet due to corona kicking in and everything getting cancelled, but it’s been pretty good as a storage unit for models as well. I can provide more on this bag/configuration later on. I think it would be a good bag if you wanted to bring more than a few big monsters, a flyer or two, then a few trays of foam on top of that. I almost feel like I wish there was something in between the two sizes (I have since learned theres a “Pack Plus” that adds 6” extra to a bag below it as an attachment). There’s no getting around it – this thing is big, and you’re pretty much rocking up to your local store with a rolling suitcase.
I also have picked up a set of the foam trays for my Ironjawz army to give them a try. Basically got some foam for the characters and cabbages, thought id run the troops with magnets, and then the gore gruntas in foam as well. Haven’t used this much, but does feel really secure for the big stuff, and probably would fly really well in overhead like that in the 720 bag.
So that’s the bulk of it – any questions or specific photos you’d like so see, let me know.
TLDR – I love the 720 bag with racks, but get the slider racks. The 1520 is fantastic, but its huge. It’s basically a medium sized suitcase.
So I had the original dilemma that I wanted to be able to move my nids around to the local game stores, or for longer car rides etc. I wasn’t considering airplanes or anything like that for travels to bigger tournaments when I made my purchase decision. A lot of people had suggested for nids the easiest way to transport them (due to all the spindley and spikey bits) was to magnetise them, and put them into a box with a sheet of metal glued to the bottom. I love making stuff, but I was thinking about how much I spent on all the models, then im probably better off buying something proper, rather than something that I just made myself. Looked at a few options around foam as well, but came across the magna racks and looked like the way to go. So I bought a rack package (had legs, end caps etc), a foam gaunt & genestealer tray (as I wasn’t going to magnetise those), some extra leg variants and a 720 bag.
I’m in Australia, so everything costs a little more over here and we don’t really have anywhere to check stuff out prior, so I didn’t have much to go off besides the bare minimum on the internet. They have sales all the time, so my suggestion is, wait until they have a sale as you’ll at least save the equiv of your international shipping cost in the original purchase price.
Ill start with the bag first. It feels really sturdy and will hold its shape without anything inside of it (racks or foam wise). It has a lot of those molle straps sewed onto it so you can add all kinds of accessories pouches to it etc, and it has a large pouch on the front face (think Codex size), and another smaller pouch on the face of that (think 7th ed mini rulebook size). I don’t use either of these (because as we all know how much (please do not swear) you need to play these days so usually have a small backpack with me) but they feel really well made, similar to the bag. The bag itself unzips so the top and front section are accessible. You can see the dimensions on the site, but internally its ballpark 30x30x40cm. You can throw a number of racks in there in any combo that you like, but ive set mine up to use a 6” for monsters (fits trygon and flyrant with no issues) and slightly taller stuff (like neurothropes etc), a 3” for smaller guys (warriors, hive guard), and then space for one of the foam trays on top. I find this setup pretty good (but ill go into that more later).
The racks themselves are really well built as well. I had mine before the new slider ones came out, and if I had the option now to choose which I would definitely be buying the sliders (and have done since). Yes you do lose some small level of capacity on the tray itself, but I find the fact that I can pull the tray out (particularly on the narrower 3” section), take on/off and set up everything with a bit more precision on the tray means its not much of a trade off in space. Prior to that I was having to kind of crouch down, and slide things along the trays as I put it in. Plus it makes for a handy tray to just move stuff around on. In terms of space, I can put on pretty easily a maxed squad of warriors, a prime, 9 rippers, 6 hive guard and still have room for more. See below for a few pictures that show the difference in the racks, and the amount of stuff you can pile onto them (note that these are the slider trays). Apologies for the unpainted models!
(left is older design, and right is the new slider design)
Construction wise, the racks are great too. They’re a hard plastic, with a metal sheet on them. They don’t warp, are weighted and built really well, but they are a little prone to scratching from the magnets when you slide them along sometimes. But that’s ok. It’s only an aesthetic thing, and doesn’t ruin the trays at all.
My main gripe with the system is, once you’ve placed the legs in the trays, each other, the end caps on etc… theyre really really hard to get out. So if I wanted to change the combination of how its set up, it can be a real pain in the ass. So much so that I don’t even do it really. The setup I have currently works for me at this size bag, so it’s likely not to change in a hurry. Having a flyrant and 720 bag does generally limit the options as you basically need that 6” tray, and then you don’t have much to work with above unless you go two small trays, and then most won’t fit in height wise. If you were using a different army without models that are so tall, then for sure you could set up a few more racks inside. Tanks and vehicles, im not really sure how we’ll theyd go on a magnet tray, so I think a foam insert would work better for them. So – the setup that im finding works for me now is that ill run my two trays as they are as described above, and then I’ll stick the genestealer foam on top for a squad of those boys, and then I carry a citadel case (the middle sized one) for all the gaunts (as the foam only holds 38). Its not ideal, as I’m now taking a backpack, 720 bag, and a citadel battlecase.
At that point, my brain kind of got to thinking “why am I taking 2 bags, when I could just take one” – so next time there was a sale, I picked up some of the slider racks, another gaunt tray, and the 1520 bag. First impressions when it arrived was “man this thing is big!” I could easily fit more than a few racks in it, as well as few foam trays comfortably. Construction wise it’s the same as the other bag, just bigger. It has wheels and a handle that slides in and out exactly like a suitcase. I haven’t actually taken it anywhere as yet due to corona kicking in and everything getting cancelled, but it’s been pretty good as a storage unit for models as well. I can provide more on this bag/configuration later on. I think it would be a good bag if you wanted to bring more than a few big monsters, a flyer or two, then a few trays of foam on top of that. I almost feel like I wish there was something in between the two sizes (I have since learned theres a “Pack Plus” that adds 6” extra to a bag below it as an attachment). There’s no getting around it – this thing is big, and you’re pretty much rocking up to your local store with a rolling suitcase.
I also have picked up a set of the foam trays for my Ironjawz army to give them a try. Basically got some foam for the characters and cabbages, thought id run the troops with magnets, and then the gore gruntas in foam as well. Haven’t used this much, but does feel really secure for the big stuff, and probably would fly really well in overhead like that in the 720 bag.
So that’s the bulk of it – any questions or specific photos you’d like so see, let me know.
