Basing for Warhammer

Hi All

Here is a quick post about basing warhammer movement trays.  The warhammer trays you get from Games Workshop are fantastic except for one thing, the models sitting on them are not attached and you have to be very careful in moving your units or else your models decide to fall over the place!

Anyways here is a technique I use to help keep the models in place.

I did a search on eBay for magnetic paint - basically it is paint which has iron filings mixed into it.  Of course I think you could do this yourself with the right stuff if you wanted to!  I bought a pot of magnetic paint called Marabu Magnetico for around £8.  Several coats are needed for a suitable amount of magnetic attraction and I also found that criss-crossing the layers of paint helped hugely.  Due to the iron filings, the paint is textured and makes a nice effect when painted and drybrushed.

 

Starting the layers of paint.

 

The magnets come from searching eBay once again. Here I show two different methods.  To ensure that the magnets adhere to the paint on the base, I had to use green stuff for the Games Workshop model (left).  I glued the skeleton base, stuck the green stuff onto it and then followed with gluing the magnets into place.  Care is needed because the magnets are normally neodium and therefore rather strong so they can ping into each other and if they have glue on them (as in super glue), it can be messy and tough to seperate them, not to mention the chance of gluing yourself somewhat!!!!

But as soon as one magnet was in place, I would push the model onto my cutting mat thereby pushing the magnet into the green stuff and ensuring the magnets were flush with the surface to be stuck to.  Repeat for the second magnet and then set aside so that the green stuff can cure.

The other model comes from my undead mantic set (right).  Mantic models have a very handy circular base attached to the model which sits into a square base compariable to GW bases.  This means all you have to do is drill the correct sizes holes for the magnets and then glue them into place.

And there you have it! The models will not shift around when moving the trays, although the magnetic bond will not be super strong.  In order to get that you need a source of sheet metal or perhaps some copper Euro coins (1 cent coin is best because it sits in the GW base perfectly) for the magnets to stick to.  Or you could have a tray full of opposing magnets but this can be fiddly due to having to remember that every single magnet on your trays will need to be one polarity and all of your models will need to have the opposite polarity, or else you might find some models being repelled by the magnets!  Using the paint allows the magnets just to go that little bit further!

Cheers
Andy