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Hello all,

I tried searching but all I got were articles relating to magnetising bases in order to safely transport miniatures, whereas I was looking at drilling a small hole into a miniatures foot and inserting a tiny rare earth magnet or coating the bottom of the foot with a magnetic sheet, then sticking a magnetic penny to the underside of the plastic base. I am hoping to create an army which can switch out its bases depending on what kind of terrain is going to be fought over.

Has anyone tried this or knows of something similar that has been attempted on this forum? Before I go about potentially ruining my miniatures I'd like to know if anyone has got any tips!

If you do this, make sure you use a pin vice (hand drill) instead of a powered drill. I've seen people do this but instead of using earth magnets on the bottoms of the bases they just based over a small piece of sheet metal, that way it didn't matter if the polarities didn't match on the magnets. This is what I was told, so I would do a test model before you commit to anything.

If you end up using sheet magnets be wary, as most of the ones we've had through our shop have a top coating that will come off on the superglue side, meaning you'd have to re-cut it.

Thats just my two cents.

I don't see why it wouldn't work... I am just not sure I see much need in swapping bases to match terrain. I never found base theme clashing with the battlefield an issue since most people play on green felt and I don't want green bases.

If you were going to do that, I would just do clear acrylic bases. I have seen that done and it is kinda sharp. It can look like you are playing a RTS and they are 'selected' with little grids and such on the base.

That's a cool idea for magnetic bases, but not for swapping out depending on the tabletop's terrain (you never know what you'll be playing on!), and would be better for a big scene on a vehicle or as an army showcase. Plus, how many miniatures are you talking about? WMH size force or 40k size force?

I have done this with the grots on my landship so they can pivot to draw LOS for the vehicles "weapons".

I drill a hole in the heel, glue magnet it, and liquid greenstuff the gap. leave the magnet visible IMO.

I would then advice you to implant another rare earth magnet into the base. You be sure to leave the top exposed IMO for best grip. You can put the magnet in a Greenstuff tree stump, in a small hill of green stuff on the base.. etc. just be sure that when the figure has one foot elevated that his other foot has a "footing" somewhere or else it will be floating in the air looking silly.


I have my limited edition fanatics magnetized this way. with a 40mm square base with a magnet in middle with "ridges" of dirt and debris around them.. the magnet is visible if i remove the 28mm round base but hidden when it is in place. I don't have a ton of fanatic models and wanted a way to make a unit filler and a real fanatic model out of the kit. I didn't put the magnet inside the goblins feet in this instance, I merely put a magnet on the bottom of their round 28mm base. or 25mm, or whatever the it is.



Alternatively, 20-22 gauge galvanized steel sheeting is sold in 1x1 or 2x2 sections (feet) at lowes/home depot for $4-7

This works well to coat bottom of movement trays to magnetize models to. Theoretically you could cut a piece small enough and glue down to the top of your plastic bases to provide something for magnet to grab... I would be wary of texturing too thick on top of it or the magnet may not hold to the base.


Be sure to experiment before going 1 route with 100 models. You don't want to end up with a magnetic connection so weak that when you try to move models by picking them up by their heads or guns/spears instead of bases that you leave their bases and merely pick the model up you know.. that would be annoying.


Personally I assumed the OP played chaos demons, and wanted to magnetize his entire army for switching from 40k to fantasy bases.

The only thing I've magnetized to a base are the loader/wound markers for my HWTs.





For this I used 3x3x0.5mm square magnets that were thin enough not to need recessing into the model. Especially with the static grass hiding the join somewhat. The loaders have them under one knee, but the magnets are small enough to fit under prety much any GW model foot.

Good luck

I could see this being more useful for a fantasy regiment being based together on a large metal tray
Imagine how much easier it would be to play with and transport the block of 50 skaven clanrats that all stay together, but could have models removed for casualties

Or with chaos daemons for swapping between square and round bases for playing both games.

I have considered this myself, though for making crossovers between games (using LOTR Dwarfs for a Fantasy Dwarf army, using chaos deamons interchangeably between 40k/Fantasy, making an Ent for LOTR that doubles as a Treeman for Wood Elves, etc etc).

I never actually got around to doing it though, I'll be interested to see how you go. It will be quite time consuming for a whole army (which is why I never got around to doing it myself ).

I have tried this, depending on the model and base texture you might have to rethink it. Too much material between the penny on a large model and it will wobble about.

I use wall filler to texture my bases which handily gives me something to drill into so that i can have the magnets in contact with each other.

The base in front is magentised with both feet, in retrospect i think it would be best to magnetise one foot and pin the other.

Historical gamers do this fairly often as different rulles call for different basing configurations (sizes, shapes and formations). Magnet in the mini seems to be most popular as they can then use sheet metal bases which are not too hard to source.

 spears wrote:
in retrospect i think it would be best to magnetise one foot and pin the other

This is my thought, as well. The pin will better resist torque, keeping even a dynamically posed metal model upright, while the magnet keeps the base from simply dropping off when the model is lifted. Granted, this assumes at least two points of contact, but that isn't an issue with the majority of models.

I magnetized the feet of some hellions and their skyboards in order to make transporting a little easier.

Ultimately I decided to just go ahead and superglue them down. The size of the magnets needed for those feet were pretty small. Even though I used neodymium (strong ones) magnets the models kept coming apart when I moved them on the board.

I've just magnetized flying bases for hellions and other DE stuff. But that doesn't address your terrain issue. How about getting thin card plastic, cut base-size circles out of it to make swappable flock. Seems complicated, but there might be a way to simplify it.