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Hello, working on getting my army ready for playing, and I've been thinking about magnetizing the bases, as I get tired of placing a unit on a slanted hill just to have all of them fall over, looks really bad.

My idea is to use 1/4" x 1/16" rare earth magnets glued underneath each base, and using the rubber steal mats from GF9 glued down to a movement tray. Sounds pretty easy, and cheap to accomplish. Only thing I'm worried about is the strength of the magnets. It's a dark elf army, and mostly it's just infantry that I'm basing, I did get extras, so on my 10 CoK unit I could use 2-3 magnets per base, if it makes it easier.

Any thoughts?

Where are you gonna buy magnets? If you manage to pull this off cheap, let us know huh?

Well, relatively cheap, bought 100 off amazon for 8 bucks (12 after shipping), only 83 models in the army need magnets, so hopefully it'll work, if not, it's only 12 bucks.

Yes, I have thoughts.

A.) If the problem is moving minis on a steep hill terrain, how is moving them onto a movement tray going to alleviate the base problem - i.e; what is going to keep the movement tray from flipping/sliding, no matter how firmly the minis themselves are attached?

B.) Instead of using 3 magnets per base, you should just use 1 more powerful magnet. Looking at magcraft, they have .125mm magnets 100/$9.00. They also have .250mm magnets 75/$9.00. The .125mm magnets exert .3lbs of force, and the .250mm magnets exert .7lbs of force. That means you'd can do 50 bases at .6lb of force for $9. The larger ones, you only need one and can do .7lb of force on 75 bases for $9. It's not like you are constrained for size on a base like you are when magnetizing arms or weapons or whatever.

The movement tray doesn't have a problem staying in position, what I'm talking about is when maybe 60% of the base is on a flat surface, but the rest hangs so the base will tilt a little, and your whole front rank keeps falling out. I've used blue tack before and it works pretty good.

as for part 2, I should look into that also, looks to exert good enough pressure, but since I already bought the other magents, will see how they do first.

I've been getting some magnetizing ideas lately myself as of late. I am considering is using something like this to cut down on the number of magnets needed. Although I plan to use the stuff to make "hard points" for attachment of magnetized war gear I don't see why it couldn't be used for something like a tray if it actually works as advertised.

That looks pretty cool, wish I saw that first, might have been an easier way to go.

After researching, the magnets I got appear to have a 2.5 lbs. pull, so should be enough for what I need.

Well, remember to keep us posted as to your success with the magnets. Many of us have been asking - how do they work?

I have magnets on the bases of my CSM so that I can carry them round on a metal plate between games, which is very handy.

Each marine has 1 rare earth magnet, metal models have 2, and larger models like DP's and so on have more (I keep adding them until the model stops falling over when I tilt the metal plate).

I would say that about 80-90% of my basic marines can survive being upside down on the plate with a single magnet (mine are the basic ones from maelstrom games). It is harder for them to resist sliding (especially the heavier models), but a ruberised surface will help to eliminate that.

Just make sure you put on all the magnets the right way round so they will stick to the surface properly and not be fired off

SilverMK2 wrote:Just make sure you put on all the magnets the right way round so they will stick to the surface properly and not be fired off

Alternately, you may wish to do that on purpose with your Raptors/Stormboys/Assault Marines.

IIRC you can also get magnetic paint, would be cool to see if it worked as an undercoat lol.