Space Marine Gladiator Magnetisation - How to

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I wasn't planning on buying a Gladiator, because, well, they don't look very good rules wise...

However, a few weeks ago I ordered a second Impulsor from my FLGS. Unfortunately, they've been out of stock this past month. Therefore, I asked if I could swap the Impulsor for a Gladiator and pay the difference, I was reasonably confident that I could build it in such a way that it can easily be played as either. I was also confident I could magnetise the kit in such a way as to be able to build all three variants.

Here is how it can be done.

Step 1: Can you build the tank so that you can swap between both variants?

I didn't glue the roof on my Impulsor when I built it, so I could run it fully open topped and cheap, this was lucky, as it means I could put the Gladiator roof almost straight on. The Gladiator roof will however clash with the antenna which the Impulsor instructions suggest you glue onto the rear of the hull. So that had to be removed. I don't plan on using any magnets on this bit, I think friction and gravity will hold it in place without any issues:

Step 2: Magnetising a Gladiator to use all three options.

Once I had worked out that my overall plan to use the same hull for both tanks was sound, I started building the Gladiator proper. The kit is straightforward and the turret is easily magnetised. I simply glued two magnets into the walls of the main weapon mount, I then glued the weapons together and removed the pegs which ordinarily hold the weapon into the turret, and glued some magnets into the weapons, This is pretty standard really for swapping turret weapons, and little different from any other space marine tank.

Buoyed up, I built the rest of the tank, including the sponsons for the Impulsor. That's when I realised the problem.

You see, the Sponsons for the Impulsor and the Lancer are the same. However, the Sponsons for the Valiant and the Reaper are different. They have a larger surround, and a larger mounting arm for the weapons. However, both types of sponson use the same internal frame to hold the mounting arm in place, and attach the weapon to the hull.

This means, that you realistically need four of these components to build both types of sponson.

Unfortunately, I had already glued the smaller sponsons together. This means I was either stuck with just the small sponsons or I had to make up a new method of both holding the weapon arm into the surround, AND attaching the sponson to the hull.

My solution was to use some 5x1 magnets to create a new mounting system. Two glued on the inside of the surround, two glued to the weapon mounting arms:

Then, to attach the sponsons to the hull, I used more magnets glued inside the hull, in line with the polarisation of the magnets on the sponsons, to hold them to the hull:

(Being honest, this was incredibly lucky, I had left the hull unglued because it will be much easier to paint the 'interior' of the seating area before gluing the model together, if I hadn't done that, I would not have been able to glue these magnets in place, and I would have had a much harder time of it.)

Conveniently, these magnets also don't interfere with the non-magnetised sponsons:

From there, magnetising the Valiant and Reaper sponson weapons onto the mounting arms was fairly straightforward, I removed the little pegs which hold the boltguns/multi-meltas in place and replaced them with magnets, I then inserted magnets into the peg holes in the guns, and that was it:

Edited December 5, 2020 by Brother Adelard