Review: Jucoci Large and Medium Storage Cases

Jucoci make carry case solutions for your miniatures. This review by Garfy will look at two of their storage cases, so if you’ve been struggling to find ways of transporting your models like Garfy has, then this post is for you!

Jucoci Storage Cases and Backpacks are available now from their website www.jucoci.com and Amazon. No preorders, no kickstarters, just good old fashion in stock and delivered to your door.

Why is a prolific miniature painter Garfy reviewing wargaming cases? It’s true, I don’t get to game much but that’s been changing recently, there was the time in the Summer where Stahly, Dunk and I met up for some Warcry games and just a couple of weeks ago, I had my first game of 10th edition with Dunk. During these sessions, something became abundantly clear to me, my old foam trays, some of which I’ve been using since the early 2000s just aren’t up to protecting my models anymore. Modern miniatures from companies like Games Workshop are bigger and are on bigger bases, they have elaborate dynamic poses. I struggled to get my models into the foam and at both gaming sessions there were breakages. A more modern solution was needed.

I asked Twitter/X what are the best solutions for transporting your models and every answer came back with magnetic trays. One of those suggestions was Jucoci, so I reached out to them and they were happy to send me their large, medium and a large backpack for review. The first box arrived one business working day after sending the email and the second box arrived 4 business working days later. Let’s take a look inside the first box which has the Large Size Miniatures Carrying Storage Case with Light.

What’s in the Box

The Large Jucoci case is supplied flat pack. Included in the box are:

• Base piece
• Back piece
• 2x wall pieces
• Top piece
• Main front door with integrated light and battery compartment
• Small front door strip
• Pack of large plastic bolts with tool
• Cleaning cloth for the perspex window
• 5x metal trays

Things you will need which are not included in the box are:

• 8 AA sized batteries
• Neodymium magnets for each of your models

The plastic wall pieces are blow moulded plastic, so they’re light-weight and hollow. The pieces tabs into each other and then you use the large plastic nuts and supplied thumb tool to screw the pieces together. It’s very well engineered and extremely solid. A couple of the holes on my Large Jucoci Case had plastic flash from the moulding process and the nuts wouldn’t fit, but that was easily fixed with a knife.

It took around 10 minutes to assemble. The Medium Jucoci Case with Light is very similar but it has brass inserts and metal bolts. It comes with a screwdriver so you can assemble it. The doors can be assembled as either left or right hinges, you just rotate the door upside down and push-click it into the holes. Let’s take a look at each of the cases individually.

Jucoci Large Size Miniatures Carrying Storage Case With Light

The Jucoci Large Case measures a whopping 44cm high x 39cm wide x 29cm deep (30cm if you include the protruding light button). It has a handle on top (makes it 48.5mm high when handle is up), which folds flush with the top of the case, so you can stack these, however there is no inter-locking pattern on the bottom/top that allows these to stack and locate into each other like you get with storage crates or boxes. The Jucoci Large Case with 5 metal trays weighs 4.7kg.

What does this all mean for transporting your models though, well let’s look at the trays. Unlike the old foam trays that you lay your models down in, these Jucoci cases have metal trays, and you glue small neodymium magnets* to the underside of your bases so the models stand up secured in place by the magnets. The Jucoci Large Case’s metal trays measure 35.5cm long x 25.5cm from edge to edge. The inner footprint measurement might be more important though as this will allow you to work out how many bases you can fit on it. The inner footprint measures 32.3cm long x 22.3mm wide. That’s big enough to fit 63 Space Marines on 32mm bases on a single tray! These trays are also big enough to hold a Warhammer Codex or Battletome. Maybe use a rubber band to secure it and keep it on the bottom shelf.

On the inside of the case there are 17 slots on each wall, giving you a lot of flexibility on where you place the trays. You can see by my pictures that difficult to transport models like Dragons fit easily with plenty of height for trays of infantry.

*Magnet size depends on the size of the model, you’ll want a bigger magnet or more small ones for a large model like a dragon. I was using magnets that were 4mm diameter by 1mm thick with a 3D printed spacer for my infantry size models and Dunk told me he uses 5mm diameter by 2mm thick for his infantry and just superglues them straight on.

The party trick of the Jucoci Large Case is clear perspex window and internal lights housed on the inside of the front door. The light strips are very very bright and do a great job of illuminating the inside of the case. The lighting circuit is housed within the inner door. The light strips are just held in place with double sided tape and mine were peeling away from the door, but that’s easily fixed by pushing them back down. The cables follow a track moulded into the door, but my cable kept popping out, a blob of hot glue can fix that. To power the lights, it takes an incredible 8AA batteries! I haven’t tested how long it lasts but I’m hoping it’s a long time. The batteries are held in the compartment extremely securely, I used rechargeable batteries and whilst they did fit, they were so snug, I found them really difficult to remove. I’m going to add a small piece of ribbon behind them to make it easier.

Jucoci Medium Size Miniatures Transport Storage Case With Light

I was also sent the Jucoci Medium Case with Light. This slightly smaller case measures 46cm high x 34cm wide x 24cm deep (25cm if you include the protruding light button). It also features a fold down flush handle (50.5cm height with handle up). The medium case also lacks any stackable connections on the top and bottom. The Jucoci Medium Case weighs 4.1kg

As you might expect the Jucoci Medium Case uses smaller trays. They have an overall measurement of 30.2cm long x 20.2cm wide, with an inner footprint size of 27.4cm long x 17.4cm wide. These trays will fit around 40 Space Marines on 32mm bases. Sadly, these smaller trays can’t hold a Codex book or Battletome.

The internal light-up feature is also present on the medium sized case, with an external on/off button. It features the same stick on lights, with moulded cable routing and it still requires 8AA batteries. The medium case came with a stick on badge for the front saying Jucoci. You have to stick this on yourself, as it depends on which way you choose to have the door hinge open. Stick the badge on and then change to the opposite hinge opening and the badge will be upside down. Weirdly, the large case didn’t come with a badge.

Conclusion

I really like these cases, they’re incredible well designed and robust, so much so, that they have a hidden feature I haven’t mentioned yet. They’re the same height as a chair seat, that’s right! You can quite easily rock up to a wargaming event and use your case to sit on when it’s your opponent turn. You young ones reading this, won’t find that particularly interesting, but to me, someone in their 40s, this is brilliant. The thought of standing up and playing Warhammer for 4 hours is making my lower back ache just thinking about it. Don’t go throwing your old foam trays away just yet, I think they’ll make a nice cushion to sit on.

The cases are big, heavy and cumbersome to move about, but most cases are. It’s no different to me hefting around a toolbox or photographic cases. You want that extra sturdiness and protection, you don’t want light weight and flimsy when it comes to miniatures you’ve invested a lot of time into.

A great benefit is the speed and convenience of a magnetic system like this. Imagine you’re playing Warhammer the Old World and you have 200 Skeletons in a foam case to get out and set up on movement trays, it would take ages, I know I’ve done this in the 1990s and 2000s. With this set up you could just have your regiments already set up in their regiments on the movement trays. Putting them away after a game is just as easy, just have a tray to the side for dead models.

Arguably the best thing about the magnetic tray system is that foam won’t rub paint off the model or break pointy pieces that protrude from the foam that get squashed by another foam layer. They just happily stand there on the tray stuck in place by a magnet.

Cost

These products are available on Amazon and www.jucoci.com.

• The Jucoci Large Case with Light has as RRP of £110.99 / €130.99 / $134.99
• The Jucoci Medium Case with Light has an RRP of £89.99 / €105.99 / $109.99

Please note, the Jucoci website is only in $USD. I’ve spoken to Jucoci and they said they’re planning to add other currencies to their website in the future. It is possible to check out in USD and have them delivered to a country that isn’t the US. Or just use Amazon.

Is it Good Value?

I think the value is reasonable. The amount of models these can hold is superior to foam trays. You would need to buy multiple cases of foam to carry the same number of models and those cases would be bigger and harder to carry and they would cost more. Of course, you could make your own DIY version with plastic boxes, magnetic sheets and the like but that’s not free, you still need to buy all those things but it’s an option.

Check back tomorrow, when I’ll review the Jucoci Large Backpack.

I hope you found this review helpful, feel free to leave a reaction or comment below, or post your questions here or discuss on our Discord channel.