Revisiting magnetized bases

Introduction

It's an old topic, I know. Bear with me. I learned a lot in 5 years' time.

25 mm bases

The conclusion of my original article: skip the round bases, go directly on washers. All my OG miniatures - daemons and fantasy stuff - are based like this. 

And this is how they look on movement trays.

After a while, I got picky and began to dislike the look of the flocked washers. What's up with the hole in the middle? Instead, I glued the minis on their round bases, and glued the washer underneath the base. This had the immediate advantage that I could use plastic glue to stick them on better. Now, if I dropped anything, the obvious breaking point wasn't between mini and base, but base and washer.

I glued the washer on during the assembly process, so obviously I primed it as well. After a while, I discovered that the painted washer is prone to chipping. It's metal and it's ground to the movement tray and the table and the terrain a lot, no surprise there.

No matter how many layers of varnish I put on, it still chipped.

There was also a "drag" when arranging the minis on the movement trays. Like they were lightly sticking on, somehow.

This brought me to the natural conclusion: glue on the washers AFTER painting. Big brain play, I know.

There was just one more pitfall. When applied generously, super glue emanates some sort of vapor which dries white. See this movement tray on the right.

This vapor can also discolor the rim of the base. Make sure to leave the base to dry in open air (as in, not inside the closet) with the washer-side turned up after gluing it in.

40mm bases

Unsurprisingly, the original idea was literally the same as for 25mm. Glue the minis on washers which were painted and flocked.

Magnetize the bases.

The "Aha!" moment came when I got a batch of these bases which do not have GW's peg holes. I realized I could instead glue the washer underneath the base!

The movement tray does not hold as fast, since there is not just plastic, but also air between the magnet and washers - no direct contact. Don't turn them upside down. But it is good enough.

But what about regular GW bases? Well, just stick a magnet on it.

And glue the washer to the tray instead.

Magic!

32mm

I originally hated this mid-sized new base from GW. I now realize that many of their miniatures look better on larger bases. However, you can't deny some drawbacks. Namely, 32mm bases are no longer compatible with WH Fantasy movement trays. Nor are they compatible with the bucketload of magnetized trays I made for storage. Nor do 32mm square bases exist to create those perfectly lined up movement trays.

... wait a minute. That last batch of 40mm bases do not have squares underneath either!

A ruler and pencil can divide the tray into appropriately sized squares. Then just reuse whatever bases you can't use otherwise. This one is just slightly mismatched, with one slotted and 14 regular round bases. But later, I started using whatever oddball junk I had, like 20mm squares, painted bases from eBay lots, etc.

Since none of these have peg holes, the 25mm washer goes on perfectly.

Cavalry bases

Don't even get me started on how I hate GW for switching cavalry bases from 75x25mm oval to 60x35mm oval. I played around a bit with those here and here, but no definitive answer yet.