Dropfleet - Magnetising UCM Cruisers

Things have been pretty busy on the Dropfleet front. My appetite for the game and the models continues to grow, especially after success with the Frigates. As the Cruisers come with an equally large amount of options and configurations per ship, i wanted to make sure i could take advantage of  them all.

There is quite a lot of tutorials on the Internet regarding Cruiser magnetisation, so working it out wasn't difficult. Here's how i got on!

The first bit to address was the upper hulls of the Cruiser, of which there are two. One where you can mount turrets on the upper hull and one where its just armour plating. I used the weponised upper hull to map where the magnets should be placed on the main hull. I did this by holding the upper hull in place on top of the main hull, then i used a pin vice to drill a small hole through the weapon socket and into the main hull. I then used a larger drill bit to make a cavity to counter sink the magnet inside. I used 0.5mm thickness by 2mm diameter magnets for these ships. You can pick up 50 for about £1.50 on eBay!

I then 'reverse-mapped' the position of the magnets onto the upper hull without the weapon mounts.

The under side of the main hull was easy, as the magnets sat perfectly within the weapon sockets.

I  moved onto the weapon options; 2 turrets, 2 bombardment cannons, one burn through laser, and one troop lander module-thinggy! I just stuck the magnets straight on here, no drilling or counter sinking required. The magnet sizes turned out to be perfect, as 2 magnets stuck together was the exact height/depth of the weapon sockets! Oh, and i suppose it goes without saying, but keep an eye on your magnet polarities when your doing this, or your magnets wont stick to each other!

So these are all the options i was left with after magnetising.

The rear hull segments didn't require any magnetisation, as they just clipped on nicely to the main hull. I did glue these weapon turrets in place here, as the sosckets were specificallly deisigned to fit onto these area of the hull only, so i wouldn't be changing them around.

Finally for a little extra flavor, i drilled the engine's!

Done! For the time being i have bagged up each Cruisers options separately, just in case the magnet polarities aren't inter changeable between ships (despite my best efforts!)

Straight onto painting! I hit the whole lot with Army Painters uniform Grey. As you can see, i spent a bit of time mounting the pieces for ease of painting.

Firstly i washed the whole model lightly with GW Nuln Oil. I then highlighted the edges with Vallejo Stonewall Grey (i think!) and a small white highlight after. The engines, weapon barrels etc were painted in metallic, washed and highlighted.

And here's the sneak peak of the finished Cruiser with all of its Class options! It does take a bit longer to paint up the Cruiser when you do all the options as well, but not that much longer. I'm pleased i put in the effort, but we'll see how i feel after doing 3 of these!!

Proper pictures to follow soon!

The GunGrave