Boxing Clever

AS my collection of 10mm biblical troops grows, I have been looking for ways to store them.

Until recently I have been putting units into transparent plastic bags, and putting these into larger bags, labelled by people, eg Assyrian, Egyptian, Hebrew, etc.

Not a great look, even when, unlike here, tucked away under a table

Accordingly I have been look for a display cabinet or similar, where the miniatures could be on kept upright, not so much to have them on show, but rather to make them easier to access.

Ideally the cabinet would be a mix of glass and wood (or similar), so as to save on dusting - but trying to find what I wanted proved frustrating.

There are curio cabinets and the like, but they tend to be expensive, often require assembling, and, most importantly, are usually designed to hold items considerably taller than 10mm-scale figures.

Then recently, while walking home from Finchley, North London, I did my usual thing of popping into charity shops and into stores of the likes of Poundland and The Works.

Nine times out of 10, I do not find anything I want - actually, 99 times out of 100 is probably nearer the mark.

But on this occasion, in a Ryman, I saw a stack of coloured plastic boxes. They were not exactly what I wanted, but I investigated further at a Ryman nearer home, and then went on the internet.

Amazon, for once, proved very disappointing, my search cluttered with 'sponsored' results that had little or nothing to do with what I was hoping to find.

So I went online to Ryman, and there found a stack of 10 transparent plastic boxes, with internal dimensions of 340x215x75mm (13.4x8.5x3in).

They stack easily, and seem sturdy

The boxes are deeper than I need them be for my figures, although not, as it turns out, for associated stuff, such as buildings.

Egyptians - plenty of room for more recruits

Labelled, and with the lid on - still fairly easy to see what is inside

Hebrews - almost a box full

Midianites - a mix of camelry and open-order infantry

Assyrians - close-order infantry and cavalry

Hittites - including vassal chariotry

Elamites - all archers

Canaanites - definitely more to come

Javelin-armed cavalry - not a common sight in biblical-era armies, but will probably come in handy one day

The armies occupy eight of the 10 boxes

Taking the figures from their plastic bags revealed a few that needed regluing, but that should prove less necessary in future as the miniatures should no longer become entangled with each other.

I used one of the leftover boxes to house bridges and buildings (by no means all of which are suitable for an ancient battlefield)

The final box has odds and ends

The finished stack