The holiday brought hounds!

[ggergnayr]

I’ve been torn on where to proceed with starting an army, and thanks to my wife our house fell to Ruinous Powers over this Christmas. 
Death to the False Emperor!

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I look forward to seeing how those doggos progress!  BYW, magnetization is your friend as is pretty easy to do with knights.

[ggergnayr]

I was wondering how necessary that is to do. I’ve seen a lot of people recommend it. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Necessary?  No.  But it means that you don't need to decide what particular wardog datasheets and weapon options that you are going to use now, and allows you to freely swap between same to best fit the meta, what any particular list may need, or as required to have your list be under a given point limit.  So, for me anyway, its well worth the minimal difficultly, time and expense required to magnetize the various options.

 

I mean, you could also do the same by buying a whole bunch of wardog models so that you have all the variants you might want to field covered, but this lets you do that on the cheap, both in term of monies and painting time.

 

For example, I kitbashed two imperial autocannon armigers (helverins) with 2 wardogs, and magnetized all the options.  I can now swap between and field (up to a total of 4, of course) up to 2 each of any of 5 types - so, doing with 2 kits something that would require 5 if I were to have glued the weapons in place.

Edited December 30, 2025 by Dr_Ruminahui

[ggergnayr]

Gotcha. Yeah, the ability to hot swap sounds great. I’ll order some magnets before I prime these fellas, and some YouTubing. Thanks for the pointers Doc!

[Dr_Ruminahui]

No problem, happy to help - feel free to message me with any questions you might have and I can let you know how I did mine.

[ggergnayr]

These War Dogs have some incredibly droopy arms. They say not to glue them so they can be posed, but is it better to lock em in a little? They’re full on danglers. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Whichever you prefer.  I didn't glue mine, but didn't find them that loose - that said, their "natural" pose is just kind of dangling anyway.

 

If you do leave them unglued, then change your mind, you can always put a drop of glue into the joints later.

 

Incidentally, if you are going to magnetize them, you'll want to cut/saw off the knob on the bottom of the arm which inserts into the weapon, and replace that with your magnet.  I used 4mm x 2mm round magnets here. 

 

For the top, I used 3mm x 2mm magnets - you'll need to get a small finger drill (commonly known as a pin vise) and appropriate sized drill bit.

 

Finally, the most important things are to make sure your magnets are seated "flat" (so, the magnets can rest completely against each other) and are all facing the same way.  The later is very important, as to do otherwise prevents you from swapping freely.  Check and double check with a built model everytime before gluing any magnet.

Edited January 1 by Dr_Ruminahui

[ggergnayr]

Hell yeah. Thanks for the advice. Time to buy a tiny saw and some magnets. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

You'll also need  a knife to clean up the saw cut to make it as flat as possible, bit of greenstuff (or other putty) to secure the magnets in the weapons.

[ggergnayr]

Here we are primed and starting basecoats!

[ggergnayr]

Transfers and a mountain of Astrogranite left and we’re done. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Looking good!  The purple of the banner is a very nice contrast.

[ggergnayr]

Completed! I may or may not end up doing transfers, but I’ve got some traitor guard/brood brothers to paint and I’ll practice transfers on them before messing up my big, beautiful bastards. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

They look great!  My only suggestion would be, with great big bases like that with largely vertical models, it gives you a real opportunity to detail them to tie the models into whatever world they are intended to be in in, and that currently they seem rather plain.  So, that's something you might want to go back and add to.

[ggergnayr]

That’s a very good point, the bases are plain Jane. I’ll dig around and see what I can do to gussy them up. 
Super glue the best bet to add onto basing material?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Depends on how uneven your basing material is - if there are bunch of larger gaps, white glue probably works better, though you may need to glue material to hide the join, as the glue will be more visible than super glue would be.

Edited 7 hours ago by Dr_Ruminahui