Product Review – Battlefoam Malifaux Bag
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I've been meaning to replace my original army transport bag for a while now. The nylon was starting to crack and lifting all the tray out of the deep bag was getting annoying. After shopping around I decided to go the fanboy route and pre-order the Battlefoam Malifaux Bag. From the product shots it looked liked a really nice bag that would hold all my stuff. I've been looking at the bags for a while, but the army green was a bit of a turn-off for me. I received my bag today and thought it'd be nice to give it a full impartial review.
The Basics
To start, the exterior of the bag is constructed out of canvas, a big plus since it should wear better than vinyl and cracking won't be an issue. The embroidery is top notch, no annoying jump stitches to trim and the density is light enough that the flap bends easily. The case is really solidly constructed with no exterior pouches to snag on door handles or parts of your car (something that happened all the time with my other bag.) It's lined with some type of stiff material that gives it shape an makes it really solid, much like quality luggage. The handles are a nice heavy rubber with a comfortable grip. The strap connects with heavy metal clips that you'd have a hard time breaking.
Inside it comes with two sheets of precut foam and one larger block of pluck foam. (Everytime I see Battlefoam selling pluck foam I think back to the YouTube commercials with the owner bashing on how flimsy pluck foam is ... oh the irony.) The foam is a high density and much firmer than my other trays, I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but time will tell. There is a separate compartment that is supposed to house your cards, decks, tokens and markers. The interior of all the compartments is lined with a black vinyl. There's a pouch that should fit a rulebook in here, a similar pouch in the miniature section as well as a canvas pouch on the outside.
The Good
This is a really solid bag. The construction materials are high quality and there has been some obvious thought put into the design and construction. I can fit all the released Ressurectionist models I own, a Lady J crew and a Pandora crew in here with room for more. Of course depending on how many more models will be released in the future I may wind up outgrowing the bag. It seems like it will fit a full faction with multiples of the minor minions fairly easily. However if you own everything that's been released you're going to need multiple bags. Little details like the metal clips on the strap, heavy duty zippers and a durable outer shell make this a bag worth owning. Having pouches to hold decks and spots for markers is a nice touch.
The Bad
Of course every bag has it's down sides and this one is no exception. The pouch that is supposed to fit all your cards won't fit the hard plastic sleeves that I use for my cards. I suppose if you had thin sleeves or just laminated your cards they'd fit. However there's no way that you can fit cards for every model the case holds in this tiny pouch. The pouch that is supposed to hold your tokens and counters is also tiny. I can barely fit two bags of body parts in it. In the same vein there's not a place for a tape measure, granted I like to use a TAC Template but I still need a full size tape to measure range on things.
It's slightly disappointing that the chose to not cover the back of the embroidered flap with material. It cheapens the look. It's be nice if the canvas pouch was doubled up as well, but I imagine this was done to allow it to lie flat.
I hope that they'll release the foam trays separately. The tray with the smaller slots doesn't fit most of the height 2 models, and the ones that do are a really tight fit. The tray designed for "oversized" models holds most of them nicely, but a few like the Death Marshalls and Seamus are an awkward fit. The 2" block looks like it will fit most of the odd sized models, but some might be a tight fit (Mature Nephilim, and Lord Chompy come to mind).
Final Thoughts
I like this bag. It's a good buy for the price point and looks sharp. If you're a big fan of Malifaux it's a great way to show it off. If you're not a fanboy, you can probably find another bag that will suits you just fine. I've got great use out of my Sabol bags and will continue to use them for other games. You can probaly find things that are cheaper than either company, but for ease of use and easy availability they get my vote.
I wish that Battlefoam had put more thought into the game aids section. There's enough room in the bag to make the pouches slightly bigger, and if they had a fold that allowed them to expand you could fit more in it. It's a bummer that I'll have to bring another bag to hold my stat cards, counter and tape measure.
