My Shorehammer Cargo Crate. Although designed for the Shorehammer convention, I’ll probably make this my go-to storage box when taking games to any convention.

Although I haven’t written much about my preparations for  the Shorehammer Convention later this year, I’ve been pretty busy building terrain, painting figures and—tah dah!—a new cargo box to make transporting my convention games a tad easier.

It’s called my Shorehammer Cargo Crate.

Some time ago, I reported that I was hosting a series of narrative games at the Shorehammer Convention in Ocean City, Md., Nov. 21-24. (In fact, I’m hosting eight games. Crazy me.)

I’m working on building a detailed, hopefully diorama-level game board. With that level of detail, however, the board may be a tad fragile, so I decided to build a solid storage box for it.

I could have just bought some big cardboard storage boxes—they do manufacture the right-sized boxes. But then I’d have to heft them about. By building my cargo box, I not only can just wheel the terrain boards into the convention, I can put storage boxes on top with my miniatures and game accessories.

So, one trip and I’m done!

I didn’t want to make the cargo crate too big. It’s built to hold two terrain boards, with other gaming accessories put on top. That way, I only have to make one trip between the SUV and my convention game table.

There’s not much to say about the construction process. The base of the box is a solid surface of plywood supported by two-by-fours, with industrial wheels underneath. The sides are one-quarter-inch-thick plywood sheets, supported by a frame of one-by-two boards.

The top and interior shelf is 3/8ths-inch-thick MDF board.

The interior holds two 24″ by 54″ terrain boards with a maximum height of seven inches (to allow for rolling hills, low ruins, and such).

To jazz the whole thing up a bit, I painted up my cargo crate as an Imperial Guard ammo box, complete with an Imperial Aquila on the sides and top.

Naturally, I sized it to fit in my family’s SUV. Although it’s not light, the crate isn’t heavy. I easily can lift one end into the rear of the SUV, pick up the other end, and just roll it into place. Once at the show, I can remove it by reversing the process.

There’s a small hook in the front, so I can attach a rope. I’ll just load up the top with any extra stuff I need and then roll the whole thing into the hotel elevator and up to the convention room. Piece of cake.

Take a look at the Shorehammer web site. It’s a great little show, and I think you’d enjoy it. There’s a lot more offerings this year, including more narrative games (which I really like). If you want to see what The Corvus Cluster is offering, check out our Corvus Cluster Narrative games..—TheGM

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.