Magnetizing the Cyriss heavy vector kit with only 5 magnets

 

Some more red and white tide!

Yeah, took me a while to edit these. Still a bit blueish but better to post them.

As promised some Khador

Kayazy Assassins

 

Irusk1

 

Manowar Drakhun

 

And the Conquest!!

   

 

Not so black yet.

Black Ivan is probably the lamest warjack name coming out of PP ever. I mean, really. “Hard Vodka Comrade” would have been less silly and obvious, but whatever, still a good Destroyer on steroids. And even though I don’t usually like character warjacks with such obvious bonds to one single caster, I think he is worth the extra point (to a Destroyer) if you have a good use for him, his extra RAT, and the few abilities.

Anyway, here’s a couple of pics of the posing and base work before painting. There’s no plastic jack I ever posed without messing around with legs, arms and whatnot. And this was not the exception. So to match his better RAT I thought I’d make him resting on a bit of cover, supposedly surrounded by a few fellow Winter Guard Riflemen behind the sandbags.

       

 

Warmahordes objective markers

So there’s another WarmaHordes tournament brewing here. Still not sure if we will get the minimum 10 people to play because there’s a lot of whining about having to field 25pts armies fully painted.

Anyway, one of the requirements is to bring 3 medium based objective markers, and 1 big base one. Most won’t bring them of course, but I thought it was a good chance to make some. On hindsight though, I should have probably made 2 big base ones for when I play those scenarios here at home… oh well…

I just grabbed a bag full of bizarre bits I have. I use that bag for weird bases like the ones on my Cryx models. And here’s what I came up with. Be mindful that the medium ones are the classic “flag” objectives and the big one is usually a big rock you have to destroy. But honestly the only requirement is base size, so I just went a bit weirdo with them.

On the medium ones, the chests are not glued to their ghostly guardians, so I can use them for other games as well. The ghosts are pieces from some 40K demon or something.

The big base has some nice skeleton laying on treasure I found, a burnt bonfire from a Lord of the Rings set and some old Orc or goblin spear points.

Get a few bases and some weird bits, and make your very personal (not even you know what they’ll look like!) objective markers.

 

Heavy metal magnets.

or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Khador Heavy Warjack plastic kit.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. In fact, the subject has been built, painted, and operational for a while now with quite a few battles under its belt.

Privateer Press’ lovely heavy ‘jack kits are screaming for magnets. In Warmachine it’s not a matter of switching a bolter for a plasma gun. You can get away with that. Magnetizing these kits gives you four completely different playing pieces, and it’s well worth the effort.

So after unboxing your kit you’re left with a torso, legs, a couple of shoulder pieces, and a host of heads and arms to personalize your warjack. The first thing I did, and having had the experience of building and painting the metal starter box, was to pose the model in a way only the plastic kit would. I decided to make him stepping over a big rock, therefore I cut part of the left foot to make it bent. Placed the rock, dryfitted my legs to make sure everything was in place, and cut and glued the foot piece in place. After that I glued the legs to the base.

Now comes the easy part before the hard work.

First I drilled both firing weapons for a better look. The Decimator’s gun can be drilled completely while the Destroyer’s cannon it’s up to you how deep you go. I made it just enough to look good when painted. The original piece is way too shallow.

Then, I realized the heads and right-hands-with-huge-axes options were not going to be that heavy. It’s a light resin, so I punched some circles with some office circle-cutting thing (you probably know the name of the tool in English… I do not) from some little metal pie oven trays I keep around to make craters. Those are stuck to the hand and head variants, trimmed a bit, and glued. This is actually looking decent!

Now it’s time for some drilling and magnet gluing… always a bit of a pain. Anyway, I glued a magnet on the neck position, one on each shoulder (on the arms side of course), and the right arm needed to get two magnets, one to attach to the shoulder (so keep your polarities correct!) and the other for the right-hands-with-huge-axes pieces. You are able now to check how those heads fit and even how the axe hands work on the right arm.

After this is done I glued the shoulders, slightly turned in a way they don’t look so stiff, and glue the torso to the legs. You already have your basic model. Everything else will be detachable and usually kept in a ziploc bag for safe-keeping. You can even start painting it in case you take a while with the final step.

This next step is tedious, but obviously important. Drill and glue magnets on every one of the weapon options, checking the polarity on the correct shoulder all the time. You can see I glued the left hand to the arm, since it didn’t need to be a separate option. And yes, after this you’re actually done!!!

So here are the options, clockwise starting from the top: Juggernaut, Destroyer, Decimator, and Marauder. The kit comes with cards for all of them, specially useful the Decimator one since it isn’t in the 2010 card deck.

I’m sure I didn’t cover the process in extreme detail, like where to buy magnets or which glues to use. The thing is, my data won’t mean anything to you (unless you live in Buenos Aires) so go to your friendly hobby shop and ask about magnets, sizes, glues, and of course pick up a heavy warjack kit. Oh yeah, here’s a little something extra for your troubles.