Need Advice: Mangetising hive tyrant/swarmlord

[flyinggiraffe]

I'm just starting out with Tyranids and am going to pick up my first Hive Tyrant model today. I've decided I'm going to magnetise my MCs and Warriors so that I can customise them and be future-proofed against any crazy future codex updates.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how I would go about magnetising my hive tyrant to give me as many options as possible, and I'd just like to ask some of you who have more experience than me whether this seems viable (I've never magnetised a mini before).

I was thinking of:
- A magnet in each arm socket
- A magnet for the head (to switch between tyrant and swarmlord heads)
- A magnet in the part of the body that connects to the legs (to switch between flying pose and standing pose). The idea is that I would glue each pair of legs onto a separate base and switch the body depending on whether I wanted to have a walking tyrant/swarmlord or flyrant. Is this workable?

Finally, the thing that I'm most uncertain about is the wings. I'd like to leave all four arm sockets free so that I can equip my flyrant with any combination of range and cc weapons. However my understanding is that the wings ordinarily take up an arms slot. From looking around the internet there are two options here: (1) drill holes on the back carapace, magnetise and use them for the wings. I find this pretty ugly and don't like the idea of having to cover the magnets up whenever I play a walking tyrant. (2) Drill a hole on each of the model's "shoulders", on its side, just above the regular arm sockets but not on the back carapace, and magnetise. This seems like a better option to me, assuming it will actually work.

Does anyone have any experience of doing something like this, i.e. attempting to completely magnetise their tyrants for all possible roles? If so, do you have any advice or thoughts about what I plan to do?

[mordhel]

The only problem your going to have with trying to get a walking and flying tyrant out of one box kit, you only get one lower torso ball socket and you need two for what your planning to

[Deadlink]

Okay Flyinggiraffe, your on the right track. There are a few things that need to be done a specific way other wise you can messup the flyrant/tyrant but your on the right track.

Mordel, your completly wrong on this you dont need two torso bits the one peice you have can be magnetised and then used for both walking and flying poses, although you will need to have 2 bases one for flying and one for walking.

So when magnetising the tyrant, I'll explain it in 3 parts: Body and Head/Body to tail joint/arms adn wings.

Body to tail joint: With this you need to build the flying tail( I believe from memory you would join two halves of the tail as well as legs for both walking and flying. For the walking tail I don't think you will have to build anything bar the legs. But after the tails are buit you should have 2 tails as well as the hip join peice that would fit into either flying or walking tail. For this you simply need to magnetise the join area that connects to each tail peice and also put a magnet onto the side of the hip peice that connects to the torso.

This way you will be joining which ever leg/tail bit you want to the hip piece.

Body Head: This is really easy. Glue the two halves of the head i believe there is the swarmlord head and the normal. ( note magnetise the arm sockets before you glue the torso) just drill holes to the size of your magnet if you drill to far fill up the gap with gs then push the magnet in place and leave to dry . You need to do this for all the arms sockets, the head socket and also the bottom of the torso where the hip peice joins. You can glue the head before you drill but for the arm sockets I recommend you magnetise then glue.


Arm and wings: These are pretty straight forward, you just find the pose you want for each arm and drillthe place the magnets. For this because the arms are solid you can get away with using super glue instead of putting gs if you want but to do that your hole has to be drilled perfectly so I recommend you still use gs. With the wings. They are to big to be hel up by the magnets. I recommend that you drill a smaller hole just above the arm socket adn pin that. This way most of the wing is held by the magnet and the exces weight is held by the pin.

But yeah if you have more questions please pm me, I'm kinda in a rush so i might not of explained it properly.

Also here is a link to a tyrant magnetsing thread. I havent magnetise mine yet, i'm doing that today. But I have magnetised many other before and have asolid understanding of what needs to be done where so again if you have any question please pm.

www.miniwargaming.com/content/magnetizing-hive-tyrant-swarmlord-flyrant

Good luck,

Deadlink97~

[flyinggiraffe]

Jan 9, 2013 2:41:47 GMT Deadlink said:

Okay Flyinggiraffe, your on the right track. There are a few things that need to be done a specific way other wise you can messup the flyrant/tyrant but your on the right track.

Mordel, your completly wrong on this you dont need two torso bits the one peice you have can be magnetised and then used for both walking and flying poses, although you will need to have 2 bases one for flying and one for walking.

Great, this is exactly what I was planning on.

Jan 9, 2013 2:41:47 GMT Deadlink said:

Body to tail joint: With this you need to build the flying tail( I believe from memory you would join two halves of the tail as well as legs for both walking and flying. For the walking tail I don't think you will have to build anything bar the legs. But after the tails are buit you should have 2 tails as well as the hip join peice that would fit into either flying or walking tail. For this you simply need to magnetise the join area that connects to each tail peice and also put a magnet onto the side of the hip peice that connects to the torso.

Easy.

Jan 9, 2013 2:41:47 GMT Deadlink said:

Body Head: This is really easy. Glue the two halves of the head i believe there is the swarmlord head and the normal. ( note magnetise the arm sockets before you glue the torso) just drill holes to the size of your magnet if you drill to far fill up the gap with gs then push the magnet in place and leave to dry . You need to do this for all the arms sockets, the head socket and also the bottom of the torso where the hip peice joins. You can glue the head before you drill but for the arm sockets I recommend you magnetise then glue.

Again, no problem.

Jan 9, 2013 2:41:47 GMT Deadlink said:

Arm and wings: These are pretty straight forward, you just find the pose you want for each arm and drillthe place the magnets. For this because the arms are solid you can get away with using super glue instead of putting gs if you want but to do that your hole has to be drilled perfectly so I recommend you still use gs. With the wings. They are to big to be hel up by the magnets. I recommend that you drill a smaller hole just above the arm socket adn pin that. This way most of the wing is held by the magnet and the exces weight is held by the pin.

But yeah if you have more questions please pm me, I'm kinda in a rush so i might not of explained it properly.

Also here is a link to a tyrant magnetsing thread. I havent magnetise mine yet, i'm doing that today. But I have magnetised many other before and have asolid understanding of what needs to be done where so again if you have any question please pm.

www.miniwargaming.com/content/magnetizing-hive-tyrant-swarmlord-flyrant

Good luck,

Deadlink97~

Are you sure the wings can't be held up by a magnet? I have both 3mm and 5mm magnets and would really rather not have to pin. The way you're describing it (pinning by small hole above the arm sockets) means that the wings will take up an arm slot, doesn't it? I was actually thinking of drilling and placing another magnet above the regular arm slots, dedicated to the wings.

So, from that tutorial you linked to, in this photo:



Instead of drilling a small hole for the wire I was thinking of placing another magnet (or even two stacked magnets if one isn't strong enough). The rationale is that then I can get both arm slots, and hopefully they wouldn't be visible when I use a walking tyrant because they'd be obscured by the weapons I equip.

However, like I said I've never done this before so if this doesn't seem viable please feel free to brutally crush this idea

[Deadlink]

I dont know about stacked magnets, but I am trying to put a smaller magnet into the wing as well, when I finnish I'll post up some pics but yeah try another magnet. I am also not to comfortable with the pin, but if a smaller magents doesnt work then I'll pin. But yeah definetly try witht he smaller magnet.

Deadlink97~

[mordhel]

Deadlink, thanks for the clarification. I never even thought of just magnetizing the lower ball joint.

From past experience trying to magnetize old metal model arms is that the magnet might be strong enough to hold the arm in place but it won't stop it from rotating. So the pin just stops the vertical rotation of the joint.

[fleetofclaw]

I stacked magnets and the wings still droop. Unless someone has some serious magnet-fu I think pinning is the way to go. It's funny because I was trying to find that exact article deadlink, so thank you. Only problem, he makes no mention of what gauge of pin he uses. Though I have a lot of experience magnetizing, I have very limited pinning experiend (just cut up some paper clips to help glue old metal Zoanthrope models together). Any specific recommendations for what sort of pins I should use from anyone out there with experience?

[infornography]

I use stripped out single wires in a Cat 6 cable for my pinning. Usually does the trick and is the same thickness as a typical hobby hand drill's bits.

[Deadlink]

I'm not to sure, what size pins to use to be honest. you could try paper clips but i'm not sure about that. The one in the pics look somewhat thick. So I found a coat hangar with a slightly thicker rod and a nice rubber tube allt eh way around it, this seems to be thick enought to hold the wings. Althought I am annoyed about the lenght of the pins so i guess I'll have to experiment with sizes before I glue them in place.

deadlink97~

[VenuxHashMan]

You can magnetise the wings without pinning, you just need to drill a little deeper so that both magnets are submerged in the body of the tyrant.

This is using 2mmx2mm magnets and it hold up fine, you can even pick the tyrant up by his wings and he's still pretty sturdy.

The initial hole i drilled in the body was about 5mm deep. I hope these pics come up ok, this is my first post on here...

[mchgnfan]

Jan 9, 2013 4:14:37 GMT flyinggiraffe said:

Are you sure the wings can't be held up by a magnet? I have both 3mm and 5mm magnets and would really rather not have to pin. The way you're describing it (pinning by small hole above the arm sockets) means that the wings will take up an arm slot, doesn't it? I was actually thinking of drilling and placing another magnet above the regular arm slots, dedicated to the wings.

Instead of drilling a small hole for the wire I was thinking of placing another magnet (or even two stacked magnets if one isn't strong enough). The rationale is that then I can get both arm slots, and hopefully they wouldn't be visible when I use a walking tyrant because they'd be obscured by the weapons I equip.

However, like I said I've never done this before so if this doesn't seem viable please feel free to brutally crush this idea

Do you mean like this?
It's the old metal tyrant and balrog wings, but the concept still holds, and it's probably easier...

[fleetofclaw]

Beautifully done. Hmm... maybe tricky to redo mine.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using proboards

[Nightmare20]

Personally, I would use the flyrant tail and model the swarmlord leaping down on its enemies, while magnetizing the arms and legs so you can utilize wings and still have full use of all 4 arms. If you plan on a dakka flyrant there are a number of good conversions to double up on devourers.

[flyinggiraffe]

Jan 10, 2013 23:05:43 GMT mchgnfan said:

Do you mean like this?
It's the old metal tyrant and balrog wings, but the concept still holds, and it's probably easier...

Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind! How's that working for you? How does it look when you remove the wings? What size/strength magnets did you use?

[flyinggiraffe]

By the way after giving this some thought I'm actually considering just buying two tyrants, one for tl devs with wings (which I'll just glue), and one for walking tyrant/swarmlord, which I'll magnetise. More expensive, but it seems like less of a headache.

If I do that then the only configuration I'll be missing out on is that cc flyrant or hybrid cc/dakka flyrant. I can probably live with that.