Storing, Packing and VBCW thoughts

Went to the gun shop again today, and picked up two metal cash boxes for my new historicals. The 8th Army figures already had magnetic bases, and when I showed a couple to the staff they were flabbergasted by the detail. I think they have a better idea now of why I'm using their wares to keep my collection - though they still didn't have the harder customizable foam, just the wavy type that doesn't really hold small models in place. I got a little of it anyway, to help secure vehicles.

Sisters of Battle vehicles.

WWII era vehicles. This box is too shallow for a layer
of proper foam under the models.

8th Army infantry. Or Mobile Division, if we revert to 1938.

I bought a roll of magnetic tape and adhered it to the VBCW types:

Haven't quite figured out how to get the plastic
bill retainers off, but there's plenty of room for what's there.

I received a copy of Xenos Rampant today; with its modular, generic army-building rules it's popular with the VBCW crowd. I found a discussion group on Discord which will be having a chat tomorrow on the topic. For the moment, with just a few pages read, here's what I have in mind to begin with:

A reduced-model Mountie command, Mountie squad,
sailors in summer uniform, and British infantry.

Eighteen sailors in winter uniform, including a couple
submachine guns, Molotov cocktails, and a Lewis gun.

The scenario involving all of these will be set in the Canadian wilderness somewhere on the coast, with Mounties, sailors and Guard protecting Albert's daughters in a hidden cabin, while a kidnapping team of opposing sailors tries to get past them. The Edwardian sailors are in winter uniform because their ship was sent from south of the Equator.

My new Rohan hut may work for the cabin. We shall say it was built by an immigrant from the Shetlands or Faroes:

(One of the few things I pride myself on is being able to scrape together a story from a selection of random elements. Comes of doing children's storytimes on short notice for sixteen years. Handy for running roleplaying games, too.)

Speaking of work, the last photo is of prep for the summer reading kickoff:

Three dozen Warhammer Alliance minis, undercoated
and almost ready for paint-and-take.

I may have the teen interns go over these and touch up their lower regions with the undercoat color, but I have less than two more weeks to prepare. Some of the minis in the kit are fiddly, particularly the fantasy ones, which are armed with thin, breakable spears, so there are only three dozen instead of four dozen models here... good thing they're free!