Magnetizing a full Grey Knights Army

[Iron_Adam]

When I knew I was gonna start a Grey Knights army, I made it a point to get familiar with the pieces. By this I mean I wanted to know what I wanted to use because the new Grey Knight box comes with a ton of possibilities. Since this will be my first army and I have no idea how my playing style will evolve and which weapons i will want to use, I decided "why not use em all?"

 

In this "tutorial" I will explain how to maximize a Grey Knight terminator box, containing 5 terminators.

 

Items you will need:

-magnets (about 100 will do) dont worry they are cheap and you will eventually use em all the more you hobby. Buy the following sizes.

- 1/8" x 1/16" (for shoulders, wrists)

- 1/16" x 1/32" (for hands, totem poles, wepaons)

I got mine at www.miniwargaming.com they had a guide there that i used for the sizes, and it was perfect.

-GW crazy glue, or equivalent

-GW plastic Glue or equivalent

-1/8" drill bit

-1/16" drill bit

- elastics or grips, or something to hold the drill bit cause it will destory your hand.

- sharpie

 

 

1) First step is to assemble all 5 of the carapaces. Since theres only 5, there isnt much you can do in customization here, note that one of the back pieces is unique and you may want to use it for the Justicar.

 

2) once dry, use the 1/8" drill bit to drill holes in the sides of the torso where the magnets will go, don't drill too far, keep checking the depth using the 1/8" x 1/16"(the bigger one) magnet itself. once the test magnet is flush with the side of the torso take it out, put the crazy glue in the hole, and press the magnet in all the way, wipe away excess glue so the texture around the joint doesnt get messed up. IMPORTANT: make sure every set of magnets is polarised correctly, to keep track, use a sharpie to mark one of the sides of the magnet stack and keep marking that end as you use that the next magnet. I chose to make sure that every magnet that was used on the torso had the marked side INSIDE the torso leaving the clean side visible. This is especially important for the torso because you want to guarantee that you will be able to use any arm on the model. Choose now which torso will carry the heavy weapon, because the left side of that torso will not need to be drilled, you will be glueing that arm in place, because you will always want the one offered heavy weapon per squad, might aswell designate one model to bear the burden. This is also better because the heavy weapons are infact heavy, and would droop the magnet otherwise, looking lame.

 

3)Glue the legs to the torso, math em up how you want them to look standing. I like the heavy weapons guy to look like hes running, but maybe you'd like him to have a firm looking horse stance.

 

4) Next up, and this takes a while, drill out the magnet holes in every arm using the 1/8" drill bit for the 1/8" x 1/16" magnet again, it doesnt matter which arms you do first because eventually you will be able to use any arm with any wrist on any torso. EXCEPTION: the heavy weapons arm ( the one with the thick cable that will carry one of the 3 heavy weapons). try to make the hole in the center of the spot where you would normally glue, just so some arms aren't lopsided.

 

5) the trick in gluing the magnets into the arms is to use a torso as a sort of base. Put one magnet on each side of the torso so it is magnetized to the glued in magnets on the torso. fill the magnet hole on the corresponding arm withe crazy glue and place carefully onto the magnet, magnetized to the torso. BE CAREFUL: if you leave the arm with the glue in it on the torso for more than about 3 seconds, it will not only stick to the intended magnet, but also to the torso magnet.the trick here is to slide the magnet, once inserted, off the edge of the other magnet keeping the inserted magnet in the slot with your thumb or something. Once its in, its in, wipe away the excess glue fast, and dont forget the torso, you probably got some glue on it, and you dont want to add extra gluey texture to the torso and arm pit area. Do this for every arm.

 

6) for the wrists, the trick is the same as the torso basically, drill the hole with the 1/8" drill bit,(you may think its big, but its perfect, don't worry, it just fits if your accurate). In this box all the hands come attached to a weapon, not the arm, so this is where you will have another magnetic junction. The magnet in the hand itself will be the 1/16" x 1/32" magnets(the smaller one). Use the same technique as before when gluing the magnets in the wrists, using the arm as the base. Doing this guarantees that the polarization is always right, you want this so you can have any weapon on any arm.

NOTICE: you can only add magnets to the right wrists because they are flush. If you are feeling confident, go ahead and try this on the left wrist, but i warn you, these joints are pointed like the roof of a house and drilling through them is really hard and inaccurate. Because of this you will be short 2x arms and 4x storm bolters when all is said and done,(assuming your justicar and heavy weapons guy are going to always be the same models).

 

when assembling the arms, remember to look at the 2 halbred specific ones ( labeled A and :lol: in the joints). I chose to dedicate these arms to their respective halbred hands and weapons because if you didnt it would be too heavy to position nicely. this is pretty easy to do, just get the arms magnetised and put them on the torso, then glue the hands of the halbred to the wrists of the arms. I chose to also magnetise the right wrist of one of these halbred specific parts, It basically just guaranteed id have enough right arms in the end.

 

7) by now you should have magnets in every shoulder, and right wrist join, thus enabling you to use the 1 handed halbred, sword, falchion, stave, hammer , and banner on any of the models right hands. the left hand has 2 options: a second falchion or a hand. Sicne you might want hands instead of 2 weapons sometimes, you will have to order 4 storm bolters and 2 left arms extra to have every single option available to you. You can now glue the storm bolters to every left arm you are pretty sure you will use at first, until you r 4 come in when you order them.

- i chose not to magnetise the storm bolters because they are so small and i didnt want the extra weight on every arm incase it drooped the arm to the side. This set up guarantees that you can use everything in the box, without spending the money on 4 squads of termies to do it.

 

8) one thing i havent figured out yet is how or if i want to magnetise the shoulder pads. I may decide to jsut buy a few sets and glue them to the arms, but I may try to magnetise them aswell, this will ber very tedious i assume.

 

 

I will add pictures later as I have spent all day figuring this out and assembling and my brain is tired.

Comments, questions, criticism are all welcome

[Iron_Adam]

This is the basics i used, but I did a little more with the terminators.

 

http://www.evilbryan.com/ht_arm_swap.html

[Liquid_awesomes]

I thought of doing this, but are the magnets be strong enough to stop the arms gradually rotating to face down over the course of a battle?

[Iron_Adam]

they are definitly strong enough. the only exception is the heavy wepons arm. I glued it becuae i figured i'd always have a heavy weapon and its alot of plastic