101 Uses of Neodymium Magnets (part two)

After recovering from Salute it's been an up and down week of some extremes. The big up was Saul singing with prog-rock band Twelfth Night at their homecoming gig in Reading on Friday night, the big down was our dog, Jet, passing away in his sleep yesterday.

The dog has, of course, left a big hole and wherever you turn you still expect to find him under your feet. Karen has taken to planting flowers in the garden, Saul blowing things up on his computer and I decided to update the blog...

Reading Jim's Wargaming Blog and his post on 40K, reminded me I hadn't posted any pictures of the Eldar I painted for Saul. There were two reasons for now doing this. First off the colour scheme is very minimalist, quick to do and looks effective so may encourage Jim down the Path of the Warrior. Secondly was the judicious use of neodymium magnets. Previously I've mentioned using them for bases on planes, aeronef and, most recently, aquanef. After having an entire Full Thrust collection de-based by a two year old nephew (snap, ooh, snap, ooh, snap...), I've found magnets the only way to go. However, flying bases are not their only use and I've used them to great effect on the Eldar Wraithlord and Heavy Weapons Platforms shown here.

Games Workshop do provide a number of weapons variants for both kits and have suggested in an old WD about pinning them so they can be swapped. This is extremely fiddly and you need to be pretty exact with your drilling and pins, so enter the magnets. The Wraithlord (and old metal one) needed a bit of work on the weapon mount but nothing taxing (and certainly less effort than would have been needed with a pin vice and metal pins). As you can see from the photos the weapons are easy to switch and indeed can be switched between the Wraithlord and Weapons Platform.

The bases were purchased off a company called Foundations of War. They are resin (ruined alien temple IIRC) and are really good for adding character to 40K armies. There are a number of other useful base designs from FoW (and indeed other companies worth checking out as well) and I tend to use them on command figures and large/support weapons to add some character. I really like the way the base helps accentuate the striding pose of the Wraithlord.