Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, I still don't know if I want to start a grey knight army (it would be my 4th army this year). What may make or break it for me is the possibility of magnetizing it. It appears to me that all of the parts for Grey Knight non-terminator infantry are in the same box, but once you glue them down, you can't use the other bits. So, I was wondering if there was anything preventing me from just magnetizing the hell out of the grey knight kit, and switching the arms out when I want to change upgrades/ unit type?

Magnetise all the arms and hands at the wrist and shoulder and it should work. Also recommend magnetising the backpack for swapping to the Interceptor Squad Personal Teleporters.

It might also be an idea to magnetise the head and 1 should pad per model, allowing you to swap a silver head and pad for a white one to represent Purifiers.

That's the plan. So it shouldn't be hard?

 Powerfisting wrote:
That's the plan. So it shouldn't be hard?

In theory its simple enough. In practise might be difficult.

All the wrists on the hands and arms need drilled out and magnetised. Easy enough, and magnetising the shoulders to the body is done all the time. Backpacks are likewise very easy. Even the heads are easy.
If you plan to take my suggestion of swappable shoulderpads for Purifiers (just painted white) then that's the issue. You would need to drill into the actual shoulder of the arm and place a magnet alongside your other one to hold it into the body. Difficult because of the polarity thingy stuff and difficult because its a curved surface.
Then you need to put a magnet in the very thin area of the pad's interior, and repeat for each shoulder in the squad. The good news is you only need 1 pad per model magnetised.

I personally did this, so I can give few pointers on what to do and what not to do.

Ss deadshot said, most of it is simple. Backpacks are trivial and magnetising arms to shoulders is not hard either, though you may want to consider padding the shoulders from inside of torso with some GS or milliput. 3mm seemed good choice for both of these, though for backpacks you could test if 4mm would still fit easily.
Wrists and weapons are not hard either, they're pretty much perfectly sized for 2mm magnets. Now, the devil is in the details...


First, there are only 6 pairs of shoulder pads in the box, with one pair supposed to be used for justicar (fully inscribed).

This means that you will either have to magnetize weapons to arms (which I did), purchase some extra GK shoulder pads from somewhere or magnetize shoulderpads to arms.
I personally didn't even think of the last option, but it might even be best as it allows you to eschew the wrist/weapon magnets.

Magnetizing wrists is not a problem per se. Magnets allow the weapons to move slightly, so you can use some of the "wrong" arms for the weapons. Make sure that you mark each of the different arm / weapon pairs with same color, otherwise you will not be able to pair them without painstakingly checking each arm and weapon.

You will also find out that as you cannot use larger than 2mm magnets for wrists, weapons very easily dislocate while transporting.

For heavy weapons, you will need to use either a pin or very small magnet on left arm to make sure that the heavy weapon doesn't droop, though personally I only magnetized few psycannon/incinerator pairs and left all others as psycannons.

Second: I don't think there is need to magnetize all backpacks, unless you're planning to use only Interceptors at start. Use large magnets for backpacks (min 3x1mm), so that they can handle being moved by them. I used 2mm magnets for the first batch and had to glue the backpacks on as they were always dropping off.

I magnetized heads on the first batch, but it really wasn't worth the effort imo. Remember that you don't get 10 heads per 5 man box, so you if you wanted to switch those, you'd have to buy 2 boxes for every 5 PAGK you wanted to have, at which point you're only saving some painting time, nothing else.

Shoulderpad idea migth be worth trying as it allows you to use proper arms for each Nemesis weapon.

Finally, consider what items you're actually gonna use before doing the work of magnetizing them: for example, falchions and psilencers were very poor weapon choices for GK, though those might change in the new codex.

I would come up with a couple of viable lists.

I think (don't have the new codex) that only the justiciary can take a hammer on PAGK now, so that may make things easier. You're going to need some filler PAGK no matter what you do, so some can just be plain load out and glued. What I'm saying is if you do PAGK, you may only need to magnetize half the force to get the most useful options,

Squad x can take 1 special wpn per 5 guys
Squad y can take 2 special wpn per 5 guys
So you could have 2-3 plain glued guys, one special weapon guy and another magnetized for special wpn x, y and z

Terminators are similar, but,can take more fancy right arms. You need to magnetize the right arms on most of the termies, the left arm should be glued 3/4 of the time

Magnetize everything. Hard work, but you won't regret it. I, for one, do not.

lliu wrote:
Magnetize everything. Hard work, but you won't regret it. I, for one, do not.

After building 2 space marine armies, this I can attest to.