Monday, January 28, 2008

Tau Battlesuit figures are everything I ever wanted in an action figure

I've been lackadaisacally building a Tau army for the Warhammer miniatures game for more than a year now. Mostly, of course, I've been not building it. I mean, when I actually sit down and work on it, I get a lot done.

But my 10 year old boy is getting interested, so this weekend when I got out some models to work on, I encouraged him to get his one Orc kit out and work on it. He was able to do a good job assembling his kit, and I got a bunch of figures assembled.

But the most fun, the best thing ever, was the work I did on a couple of Tau battlesuits. I had long decided I was going to try assembling these guys with magnets on all their hardpoints, so that I could mix and match all their weapons. But even though I've had the magnets lying around for months, I hadn't tried to do that, because the tiniest magnets I was able to buy still seemed large when you think about inserting them into the arm of a tiny plastic figure.

This weekend, though, I got out my drill and went for it, drilling holes in the arms and shoulders of the figures, and in all the tiny weapon attachements, and then supergluing magnets in place.

I learned several things:

  • Gel super glue is the best invention ever in the history of models.
  • Plastic model figures are easy to drill...of course...because plastic is soft!
  • Metal figures are still a pain in the tuckus to assemble. My prior experience of figure building was with lead miniatures back in the late 70s when I played D&D. I did a lot of gluing figures to my fingers. I did a little of that this weekend as well.
  • Neodymium magnets are the best invention ever in the history of models. Now I have two battlesuits and an armory of weapons. I have a little angled piece of metal with all the weapons on it, and I could sit for hours swapping weapons on and off. I should be sitting around with my daughter and her dolls for this...
  • I'm not sure it's possible to take a good picture with my phone camera

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