Monday, 16 May 2011

Hobby: Magnets and Anti-shine

Howdy y'all!
Sorry.

Today's post is a hobby post. Yay! I won't regale you with painting tips (there are many better suited for that) but I will relate recent success with two recent purchases from our resident drug-dea... hobby retailer: a bundle of magnets and Army Painter's anti-shine spray.

First, the magnets. Cue mid-nineties info-mercial. Have you ever had your regiment of Halberdiers knocked flying mid-game? Are you tired of your models slipping around on their movement trays? Do you want to put your lovingly painted miniatures on the fridge? Then magnets are for you!

And, I'm back.

A few months (maybe a little more) ago, there was an article on BoLS about magnetized movement trays. I can't be bothered to rifle through their archives, but it is there. Problem? Not living in a land with Wal-Mart, finding iron foil (or ferro-foil, as I've learnt it's called) was tricky. About a month ago, however, I found this Swedish online store that carries the stuff.

What you do is: Get a movement tray (I used GW's mudular ones) and attach a suitably sized piece of metal on top of the bottom. Put magnets underneath your models' bases:

Yes, I sprayed the magnet black. It's the bigger of the round thingies.
And then you can (but shouldn't) turn your movement tray sideways without models falling off:

Headless bannerman shown for orientation purposes only. Badly painted movement tray not included.
Needless to say, this helps keep models in place during gameplay, and makes moving units on and off the table a piece of hypothetical pie (I haven't actually magnetized all my models yet, so large-scale testing is yet to be performed).

On to the anti-shine.

Army Painter produces soemthing called Quickshade. We'll call it dip. It shades models by dipping said models into a big tinful of goop. It also adds a protective coat. However. it's very shiny:

And this isn't the worst one. My Ulfwerener's so glossy I couldn't get the camera to focus on it.
Which is why you want anti-shine (also produced by Army Painter; it's almost like they knew we'd need to deshine our dipped models).

Yes, I'm a crap photographer. I also have no respect for my camera's need of something called "light".
The results are good enough that I figured I'd preach about them, which is why this post came into being. Now I've done that, I've got a couple of dozen magnets to superglue to my fingers... er... models, I mean.

May your brush never bristle and your paints never dry out.

Toodles.

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