Monster Fight Club has long been my go-to for wargaming trees and bushes, they fit in so well with Marvel: Crisis Protocol and the comic book aesthetic. Near the end of 2023, MFC put together a Kickstarter campaign for a container ship and cargo containers. I was very tempted, but I had just finished scratch building my own container stacks out of foam board and printed off scans of some 3D printed cargo containers I had painted. Over the last couple years, those stacks have seen a lot of play and they were starting to show some wear and tear, with the paper starting to peel away and getting fragile. So this year at Adepticon I decided to bite the bullet and picked up a couple packs of their 20' Cargo Containers and one pack of 10' Cargo Containers to replace my original ones.
So for my first post back to paying attention to my ol' blog, I figured it would be a good idea to talk about them and give a bit of a review on what I think of them now that we've had the chance to use them in multiple games of Marvel: Crisis Protocol.
How much are they, you ask? They come in around $50 per box, with the 20' containers packed as a 5 pack, and the 10' containers packed in a 6 pack, so they work out to about $10 a piece. Originally, I balked at the price, during the Kickstarter, but after handling them in person I was sold.
We were given a demo of them in person and shown how they integrate with MFC's Metropolis terrain system. They are made specifically to combine with MFC's Metropolis terrain. Which is a stackable urban building terrain system of thick cardboard walls and plastic connectors. The 10' containers even come with brackets that allow you to click the containers together, end to end, to create hallways or attach to their Hab Units or Bridges. It's a really neat system.
If I'm honest, it didn't take much for me to buy in. I had already decided to pick some up while we were at Adepticon. But after we got to play around with the for a bit, I was completely sold on them and decided to grab a set of each.
Each container can be assembled without glue, the sides slide together into the top and bottom panels and the ends snap fit into place. We were able to fully assemble them and play a game of Marvel: Crisis Protocol within an hour of buying them. If your OCD allows, you can mix an match colored pieces together too. One end of the container has a set of double doors on it, which are fully operational, allowing you to hide prizes inside of them if you would like. This way they can also store smaller terrain pieces, something that definitely interests me. My terrain storage bins are small, for ease of travel, and sometimes I don't have a lot of space to put things. Being able to Russian doll things into things is a huge bonus.
Since they are all snap fit, that means someone could tear them down completely between games, if they wanted to. That is a lot of work though and I'm not sure tear down and reassembly is worthwhile. When we were assembling them before the first game, it took a little less than half hour to fully assemble the 16 containers we had. But that can add up, and sometimes set up time can make or break the chances of getting a game in.
One of the main selling points of these containers is that they click together when stacking them. You can play with them like building blocks, now I can make whatever stacks I like, rather than be stuck with premade shapes. It makes the game table more interesting that way and then we can decide on terrain sizes on the fly.
These containers are also a lot larger than my 3D printed ones. Previously, we had issues with 50mm bases fitting on top of the original containers. These ones are large enough that its no longer a problem and the only models who won't fit are the largest based miniatures. That's a good thing too, because we like dense tables and it can sometimes be hard for medium based characters to get on top of things, if their bases will end up overhanging an edge.
The 20' containers come in two flavors. Cyberpunk Red themed and a generic set. The Cyberpunk themed ones come with company logos, such as Arasaka, and Red Moon. The generic set includes company logos such as Soylent Green, Parasol Corporation, etc. Which are all plays on different pop culture companies. The 10' containers were only available at Adepticon in the generic logos, which is perfectly fine with me. They also include a sticker sheet for different hazardous materials, numbering systems and also includes some graffiti. I'll eventually get around to adding some of the stickers to mine, but I'll do my own weathering and graffiti to them.
Overall, these seem like a great purchase and I feel like they are easily worth the price of entry. They are nice and sturdy, which means they are going to last for years. They allow for multiple configurations and if you're playing a game that requires hidden tokens or models, such as an RPG session, you can put them inside of the containers. For now the doors click into place nicely, but I'm uncertain if they will loosen up over time. I also haven't attempted to paint them yet, so I'm not sure how well they will take weathering without some form of primer coat. When I do get around to weathering them, I'll likely spray them down with matte varnish so the paint has something to adhere to. But if you're not interest in paint, they are ready to go right out of the box.
If the price is a concern, MFC does run sales occasionally. When I bought them at Adepticon, MFC had a convention sale, knocking 20% off your purchase. I believe their sales run concurrently with conventions as well, so if you want pick up a bunch of them, it might be a good idea to hold out for one of the sales to kick in. If you do pick them up, I feel like you won't be disappointed.
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