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I'm British, but currently working in Korea. In about 7 months time, I'll be going back home to the UK.

I've decided, whilst it's close, after my contract is up, to do a bit of tourism stuff before I go home, so I'm going to mail some stuff back ahead of me, including my minis.

I was wondering if anyone's done anything similar, and what they'd recommend?

So far I've just been ogling the GW cases. I got the Battle Case back in Uni, and it was pretty good for back-and-forthing on public transport.
Whilst I'm tempted by the purported ultra-durability of the 'Ard Case, part of me thinks that if I'm gonna spend the money, I might as well get the Crusade Case, so I can get some use out of it and it's colossal size in the future - though it might make shipping pricier.

On the topic of shipping, what method do you think is better? By boat, or plane?
Cheers for looking, thanks for your help!

I have shipped minis back and forth to the UK four times of my own stuff and dozens more in sales and trades and have never used a hard case.

Last time I moved to NZ I was going via a few other places so sent everything by boat as its much cheaper and slower so there was a better than fair chance I would make it back in time to receive it and thus not have to pay for storage space.

Every time I ship models I just use card boxes. Last time I shipped my own stuff I filled up small to medium sized boxes that I lined in bubble wrap, in models that I had wrapped in bubble wrap (individually in the case of metal models, together forming solid shapes if other). Once a box is full make sure it cant rattle, if it rattles then fill up any voids with packing peanuts.
Then these littler boxes get packed into a big box, any voids get filled up again. I have never had any issues what so ever in breakages, less than when I used to use a pluck foam case to carry models to the game store.
The important thing is to make sure that individual models can not move and delicate bits are supported, if it cant move it cant break.
Cost wise boat beats air massively. Speed wise the opposite. So depends upon whats important to you.

Basic advice: avoid rattling/moving models.
That's what breaks them. use lots of packing peanuts/ newspaper/ straw/ anything.

I am also in Korea, and have boxes built in anticipation of someday moving out but in the meantime I keep most of my stuff packed up anyways as it simply takes up wayyyy too much space, especially the terrain, having 4 big armies plus projects plus extras plus unbuilt stuff plus Stompas and Land Raiders Morakanauts and big models, lots of metal...
So, I picked up a bunch of very deep Battlefoam on clearance and just cut those trays down to fit heavy cardboard boxes that I wrapped in duct tape and seal with duct tape straps and adhesive velcro. With the deep trays, I can stack two dudes on top of each other in each cell, with a layer of thin high density white packing foam of the sort that you often can find having been wrapped around refrigerators or big big TVs. So, I cut squares of that stuff and lay down a dude, then a square of that, then another dude, fill up the deep trays that way, then lay another tray on top, cover the topmost layer with a sheet of the white foam, a layer of foamcore board, then a layer of bubblewrap to allow the box top to compress down with the velcro-tape straps that I built. These seem to work alright. I took one in my check in to Norway and then Netherlands in December, worked fine but it takes forever to unpack/repack the dudes. So, I got some foam core board and plan to hot glue together some trays of squares and build those for some other boxes for the long run. I also have a few very large pieces of 2 or 3" foam that I scavenged, and will experiment with those too but mostly I plan to rely on the foam core. Soft foam just gets in the way, slows things down, and takes up a lot of space. I don't like GW cases as the foam does not hold the models securely and the big problem in my experience has not been the models rattling around, but the models bashing into each other. The new GW cases do nothing to stop that. If I were buying, then I would buy KR likely. Oh, and a coat of gloss clearcoat, then a coat of matte on top of that will keep your paint from lifting off. I had built a big case from foamcore a long long time ago, and even with almost all metal models I had zero problems with paint loss even though I hauled that huge box everywhere a few times a week for a very long time. With this sort of system, I am ready to just todd these boxes into other boxes along with some other stuff to fill the space and ship as such when/if the time comes to leave So Ko. In the meantime, this system serves as short term storage also... And it is almost free, made mostly from scavenged materials and duct tape.