Twenty or so years ago, when Clan War was a going concern in the Lexington gaming community, I bought a bunch of 1″ square adhesive-backed magnets and some thin steel sheets to use for unit movement trays. They worked well enough for the purpose: keeping a bunch of little samurai in line while marching across the table.

Fast-forward to today, and the magnetic base thing has come ’round again. Apparently, while I wasn’t doing any wargaming, the wargamers adopted steel storage trays and rare earth magnets as a means of transporting figures. It’s a sidegrade (if not an upgrade) from foam, or maybe it’s just clever marketing, but I was intrigued. The guy who runs BLKOUT demos in this corner of Appalachia made me aware of Tabletop Stronghold. I’m strangely okay with supporting some dude’s localish (based out of West Virginia) garage entrepreneurship, so I picked up his smaller magnetic case. I haven’t used it for travel yet, but assembly was a breeze (and glue-free) and everything seems to work as advertised.

Not wanting it to be confused with other Tabletop Stronghold cases at the local stores, I decided to experiment. I’ve always found the Swedish M90 splinter camouflage pattern to be aesthetically pleasing, so I broke out the painter’s tape and rattlecans and commenced to defiling.

Prototype for comparison (swiped from Camopedia):