Reinforcements and magnetization

Two posts one day! To be fair its been two weeks since my last post so making it up for a second mini post. I mentioned in my last post that I got some more Lizards so I figured I'd give a quick update as to how I'm doing. I'll carry on with the battle reports in a couple days, I want to get them up to date this week, and in that I'll talk more about my current army composition in that. For now I just want to talk about my new stuff from a hobby perspective:

So just before Easter I got myself two Salamanders:

Part of me has regretted going with the basic blue for my Saurus and Skinks. Part of me was playing it safe by using a GW guide, but after not painting for so long who could blame me. But I do genuinely like the blue scheme. So I've decided to use the other creatures in the army to experiment a bit, and thus we have a yellow Salamander. Now can't claim I came up with this scheme, I did trawl through Google images looking for inspiration and there's a similar scheme in the Lizardmen book...but no guide to follow. I do need to learn to pay more attention to detail though:

The gap in his leg is a little conspicuous. Don't think I noticed it until I started painting, I know it definitely didn't look so bad before and after it was under coated. That leg was fiddly as hell to glue on without gluing your finger to the model, but yeah I should have paid more attention and got it right, or filled in the gap with green stuff. Think I was a little too eager to get this one on the table.

There would have been two here but one was missing a head and I didn't notice until I got home (damn you GW). To be fair to them I rung up my local store as soon as I realised and Owen arranged to get a new one sent to me direct so fair play.

These guys have been awesome by the way. They often get killed as people try to deal with them as quick as they can but when they work they really work. In the last two games alone they really earned their keep. But I'll give you more details on that in a later post.

I've also been doing some experimentation with magnets. I ordered them from Blue Daemon via Total Wargamer (not happy with Total Wargamer, took 3 times longer to get to me than they originally said). The magnets are great but not had so much luck with the flexi sheeting as yet. I've been trying to magnetise the movement trays I've already made and the flexi sheeting just isn't powerful enough to work through the tray. So for now I've done magnet to magnet like so:

Remember my Saurus from my second post?

Each now has a magnet glued underneath in the same position

Ranking them up on the tray, I then let go of magnets underneath the tray so they would fix in the spot they were to be glued. Held the unit up and drew around the magnets, so that they could easily be glues in place. Extreme care was taken to make sure the magnets were the right way round.

So now I can play Warhammer on the ceiling. It's really not difficult to remove the models either, I feel like the magnets are just the right strength. There are a couple of problems with this method mind. First look again at the Saurus unit, you might just be able to see that the unit sits a mm or two above the ground. That's not that much of an issue to be honest, I doubt you'd notice without me pointing it out, even if you see them in the 'flesh'. Second it requires 2 magnets per model. Again not a massive problem but I would have to take real care to ensure the magnets are the right way around. The last problem is the kicker. My Saurus all rank up fine because the magnets are in the same place under all their bases. The Saurus are all on diagonal slot bases, my characters however are on straight slot bases meaning the magnet can not go in the same position.

I've just ordered some steal paper to line the movement trays with, I'm looking forward to seeing how it works. I may have to build all new movement trays with the stuff incorporated in it, but hey I need to build more anyway so that's not that big a deal.

I'm loving the idea of magnetising my units straight into my carrying case, it would make things so much easier. Not sure if the magnets would be strong enough to be able to carry them vertically...everyone I mention this idea to looks at me like I'm insane...but I think I will try it out (maybe not with metal miniatures). If I do I think it may be better using a magnet to magnet bond rather than the sheeting, as it's stronger. We shall see anyway...