"Good approach to dismountable Perry WOtR knights?" Topic

I am considering painting up some Perry knights for 1:1 skirmish. I'd like to hear of what has worked for others to let a knight be stable on his horse without permanent gluing so I can have the same lad mounted and dismounted and with the empty horse without ordering a double pack of horses.

Have you tried a rare earth magnets?

Nope, any experience working with them?

They are pretty strong. You can get them for a few bucks on ebay (from china).
Or you can put a post (sturdy wire) between the riders legs (ouch!) And drill a hole in the horses saddle.

How about blue-tag ?

BluTac would be the simplistic and cheapest option. Just be sure there's none left on the knights when you dismount them or their opponents will think they're wearing blue diapers.

But wouldn't the wide knight's stance to allow him to be mounted look weird when he's dismounted?

I did rare earth magnets on 15mm. No problem, just find a magnet size (diameter) that will fit the size of surface area you have to work with (seat of rider and back or saddle of horse). Larger diameter magnet means more pulling power to separate them, so be careful.

Like Black Cavalier I think the driving factor is how you plan to make the dismounted riders usable.

Possibly you could drill holes in the riders' crotches to install a peg which matches a hole in the saddle top.

Then for dismounted you could prepare bases with a tube rising up that would accept the same peg and support the rider at the appropriate standing height. The peg could be brass rod or other rigid wire (large paperclip, stiff floral wire, possibly styrene rod, etc.) The tube would be a matching durable material (brass, aluminum, possibly plastic).

The one downside to doing this by hand is it would be hard to get uniformity as far as peg and hole location. The bases with tubes would probably not matter and could be interchanged from rider to rider, but depending on the saddle shape and variances in drilling by hand, each mount might only fit with a specific rider. However that may not matter since probably with knight miniaturess you want a one to one rider / horse relationship so the gear matches.

Frankly when I've done this project for mounted D&D characters, I've left the riders attached to the horses, and painted up to match an existing standing figure and then prepared a set of riderless horses. The riderless horses are mostly markers so it's not that important if the gear doesn't exactly match the mounted and standing figures, so once you have some they are very versatile.

There is a third option which is use standing figures and prepare "hobby horse" mounts to accept them for when they need to be mounted. This is handy if you already have a large investment in painted standing figures (again, for example as is usually the case with D&D).

I did this using the Horse Toob from Safari Ltd, which are toy vinyl pre-painted horses sized for 25-30mm models. With a razor saw I cut the horse in half behind the front legs and then attached the horse front to a base with a platform behind it that raises the standing figure to the correct height of a mounted model. Sorry I don't have pictures.

Safari Ltd Horse Toob: link

If I'm not mistaken the Perries are about to release a set of dismounted Knights for this period . Wouldn't it be easier to wait until the release and use the foot figures for the dismounted option ? . Or am I on the wrong track.
cheers Tom

Just to be clear (re-reading I can see where I wasn't), I plan to have a Perry foot night matching each mounted knight figure; however I want the knights to be able to dismount or re-mount in the course of play without having to assemble and paint a horse with empty saddle matching every horse with mounted knight.

What have folk's fount to be the best adhesive for permanently gluing the magnet into the plastic knight's nether regions – I presume countersunk?

And would 1/10th diameter 1/32" thick rare earth magnet be strong enough given the weight we are working with?

If using Blu-tac, I would recommend removing it after each game. Otherwise, if allowed to adhere to the miniature for too long it might get stuck so well that you might end removing a also bit of paint when removing the Blu-tac from the model. However, this is likely to require quite long periods of time, and the minor damage to the paintwork is easily repairable.

That makes more sense. I would just use pegs personally. It is cheaper and less fiddly than the magnets. By pegs I mean a wire or similar peg in the rider's crotch and a matching hole in the saddle. The hole in the saddle won't be particularly noticeable.

If you do go with magnets I suggest a steel plug of some kind on one piece (the rider?) so there are no problems if you flip some of the polarities.