As anyone who has played in a tabletop gaming tournament can attest to, it's a bit of a pain moving your stuff from one table to another. Besides the hassle of packing everything up, moving it over (without dropping a die, mini, or card), valuable game time is wasted setting up at the new table. Even if you're careful, at least once per tournament I'll someone go back to their last table and ask if they found a die/mini/whatever because they are missing something after their move. Different folks have tried different solutions, from piling up everything in a big bag or stacking it on the lid of a tackle box to MDF trays or something similar. My original solution was piling up everything on a cafeteria tray I acquired from somewhere. It worked but was hardly ideal. Thankfully, Mekanika has a solution, the Garrison Paintable Tray.
The Tray
The Good
The tray, unlike some others, was designed for Legion from the ground up. The insert it comes with fits Legion bases quite nicely, and the slots fit all the necessary accessories as well, with room to spare. The tray isn't limited to Legion however, as Mekanika's website shows that versions for other games, including X-Wing, will be available "soon." The mix of compartments in the main tray allows you to sort out a variety of items. I personally prefer to separate my dice into their respective types, but the compartments would also serve well to separate various tokens. The largest compartment serves to hold cards, deployment markers, or even aftermarket items like objective hologram tokens or reminder aids. I've even seen it used as a dice tray, though there are a few problems with that particular use, to be discussed later. While a minor thing, the styling on the tray fits the look and feel of Star Wars, and allows for some cool paint jobs. Nobody wants to carry around their wonderfully painted army around in an ugly tray after all.
The empty tray, fully painted.
Fully loaded up with my 13 activation "Meta Spam" list.
The loaded tray, with everything in its proper place.
The Bad
Arguably the worst feature about this tray is the price. It's not cheap, at $59.99 plus shipping. Production times can also be a bit of a drag, as it took a while longer than I expected to receive mine. Thankfully my questions were quickly answered and the tray shipped as soon as it was finished. Most of the other issues I've had are pretty minor. I found that primer doesn't always want to cling to the plastic used, and I had some issues with my plastic primer peeling. Maybe I just didn't give it long enough, or perhaps it just takes longer for the primer to bond to the plastic used in the tray than I'm used to. The size of the tray also makes carrying it with all your other Legion stuff a bit of an issue. It doesn't fit well into my BattleFoam case no matter how I angle it, and since the troop insert is loose, I'm always worried it'll fall out if I carry it separately. I am considering trying to make it work with a MOLLE laptop case, however. If that works, I'll include an update down the line.
The final thing I'll complain about is also minor, but it's one of those design issues that could easily have been solved with a bit more work, and that is that the troop insert doesn't fit flush with dice. Granted, this is likely a problem of my own making, as the textured compartment inserts were originally loose before I glued them down. With them taken out, the insert may, in fact, sit flush, but it's a bit odd that the use of dice and the inserts wasn't taken into account. By necessity, the tray would be a bit thicker, but that would be a small price to pay for a bit more secure of a system.
The Ugly (or at least questionable)
Finally, the random issues that aren't bad, but could have an impact on your opinions of the tray. The first one is a matter of use; because the lid/troop insert does not firmly attach to the body, I don't see much of a point in bringing it to casual game nights. If I'm going to take the time to pull everything out and set up, there's no need to add another item to the table if it doesn't really serve. Thus, if I'm not changing tables, I really don't see a need for the tray. There are likely ways to fix the problem ranging from magnetizing to using rubber bands, but I've not experimented with them yet. We'll see if that changes my opinion on the general use of the tray or not. As it stands now, unless I'm changing tables, or won't have space on the table to organize my dice/rulers/templates, I don't really use this. This really does limit the tray's use to tournaments and larger, 2v2 or Grand Army games. The second issue that should be considered is that while the textured inserts into the various compartments are removable, they can also fall out if not secured. For me, personally, I think this limits you to either permanently leaving them out, or gluing them in place. Not a huge problem by any stretch of the imagination, but something to think about. Finally, as discussed before, is the problems of using the tray as a dice tray. Without the large compartment's textured insert, this would likely not be a problem. With it, however, dice are frequently cocked and require being rerolled. Again, this is likely a problem of my own making, and could probably be easily solved by an appropriately sized piece of felt in place instead of the textured insert, but that's probably not something you'll think of until after you've tried it the other way. If you intend to use the large compartment as a dice tray, make sure you try it out a few times before gluing the insert in place.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I'm pleased with the Garrison paintable Tray. It works well as the tournament tray it is intended to be, and honestly, most of my complaints about it are over it not being perfect in other uses or me not thinking about how I could have done other things with it in the first place. If you're looking for a quality tray to use at tournaments, you could certainly do worse than Mekanika's offering.
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