"How do you beautify magnetic bases?" Topic

I've got a bunch of 15mm WW2 figures, based on washers with 15mm diameter.

I've also cut up a sheet of flexible magnet, and glued it on top of a standard Flames of War base.

My intention is to be able to use these figures individually for skirmish games (such as NUTS!), while also being able to use them for FOW.

Now my problem is this: How should I go about flocking/painting these bases?

I guess I should be leaving 4 bare (unpainted/unflocked) "holes" of 15mm diameter on the FOW base so that the washer-based miniatures can stick to them.

How do people usually flock/paint these type of bases?

I use these… auction

i believe Litko in the US do something similar.

Right – just flock around the bare spots for the washers. You can paint them though and the magnet should still hold.

Brandlin, I think you've misunderstood my question.

I already have a home-made magnetized base, and I would like opinions on how to flock and paint them. There's nothing quite so bland as a black, bare base.

Since the individual figures are supposed to come apart from the main base, I was wondering how I should go about painting/flocking them.

You could try a test and flock the entire magnetized base, and see how well the figures stick to it. The flocking will add a gap between the washer and the magnet, reducing the magnetic force to some degree.

If that doesn't work, then "holes" in the flock would seem to be your best option.

I'd suggest flocking around the spots you want to put the figures. I doubt any stick on magnet will give an acceptable degree of adhesion with anything more than a thin later of paint (and even that should be avoided if possible)

You might get away with it with rare earth magnets, but it's a lot more fiddly.

An option is to put a set of the washers down, then paint/flock around them then remove the washers. you should have nice sized holes which will also help retain the figures in place.

You have to keep the surface smooth where the magnets will stick. Certainly for skirmish / loose order formation you can flock in the gaps, though you have to be really neat about it. But what to do with the smooth surface?

I do my best to paint the smooth surface as if it was textured, to match the bases of the miniatures it goes with.

So I basecoat it grass green or sand tan or dirt brown.

For scattered rocks I use blobs of white or pale gray, washed with brown stain, dot-highlighted with white. For sparse rocks I've painted in dots; for rock piles I paint an irregular blob and then draw in the gaps between the rocks with dark brown (or you could use black). Paint pens can help with this though a brush is probably best.

For areas of moss / foam flock, I drybrush a matching green. You can do a heavy dark drybrush then a more spare light green to try to get a highlighting effect.

For static grass, I stipple paint a light grass green.

I won't win any awards, but it looks a lot better than a smooth mono-color rectangle.

Hmm donrice, your method sounds very interesting.

I'll have to try out both your approach and the "flock around the spots" approach to see which would suit me better.

Thanks for your comments!

What I have done -- and I have seen similar by others -- is create a frame around the edge of the movement tray/base which is flocked conformably to the figures' bases. This is really visually sufficient for gaming; yes, you do see the magnetized sheet around the individual figures, but it is mostly in shadow. As individual figures are removed as casualties, more of the bare magnet is revealed but by then the game is the thing anyway. I have even made some flocked spacers to cover the movement tray as figures are removed, but this is really too much bother.

It was all this mucking around that convincd me not to even bother trying to flock magnetic movement trays. My guys have mag sheet on their bases, so I:

i) put a square/oblong of steel paper in the middle of the movement tray big enough to hold the required number of figures.

ii) paint the whole thing in the base colour (brown or whatever), as the magnetsm works fien through a layer of paint.

iii) flock around the edge of the base up to the steel paper with flocking to match what is on the figure bases.

In use, just plonk the figures in the middle bit, and because there is enough flocking whch matches on both the figures and the base, you don't really notice the plain coloured bit. Whether this works depends partly on your basing technique.

I use square bases so that once all of the figures are placed on the magnetic movement tray, their individual basing/terraining gives the appearance of one uniform looking base, as if I had mounted multiple figures on one stand and had terrained the stand.