Thursday, February 24, 2011

That's attractive: Uses for magnets in 40k


I know my titles may be somewhat weird, but I do try to make them relevant to the topic on hand. 

I am a self confesses poor man hobbyist.  Money is tight, so I make due by cutting corners to provide myself options.  The best way I have found to provide options in a game that provides a plethora of highly customizable units and characters is to use magnets.  I prefer the good old Rare Earth Magnets. They are small and extremely strong.  If you are as big a tight wad as me, you may even go buy some galvanized metal sheeting (though it has to be thin).  This gives you something to adhere the magnets to so you don't have to use two magnets per coupling. 

One thing about I love about the greater Warhammer community is our willingness to share ideas.  So, in an endeavor to give some ideas for using magnets to help make customizable models for hefty savings, I have taken a few pics of models that are works in progress on my workbench and how I have magnetized them. Here goes:

 These first two pictures show how you can embed a magnet into the back of a marine and swap between power packs and jump packs.  This is very useful for Blood Angels players out there that go from jump pack assault squads to rhino mounted assault squads.




 These four pictures show you can embed magnets into the arms of many infantry models and swap out different arm conversions.  The hammernator above is usually switched betwen his assault outfit and a storm bolter and powerfist.  This is also a great setup for Space Wolf Wolf Guard terminators since you can arm them with a stunning array of armament. 


Here you see one of my six dreadnoughts.  All of them have magnetized arms so that I can switch them out for various armaments.  The one issue I run in to with this particular set up is that the arms tend to rotate and face down over time. 


 Here you see one of my predators that I built from the sprue up.  By placing magnets inside the turret you can interchange the lascannon and autocannon barrels.  I also placed magnets on top of the turret guns and they connect to magnets underneath the sponson arms.  This helps provide quick gun switches. 

Finally, here is a predator that I bought off of Bartertown.  The previous owner magnetized the entire sponson so that he could pull them out, take off the turret and replace those parts to create a rhino or razorback.  It is a pretty sweet setup. 

So, hopefully these ideas spark some interesting ideas on how to make the most of your models.  I figure that saving money is a good thing even when spending it on a superfluous hobby like 40k.  Please leave comments with your additional ideas for using magnets on 40k models.

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