Warhammer Armies - development and Magnetizing Movement Trays

Most Warhammer armies are composed of units that field in formation - so many models wide, so many deep. It is favorable to put your army on appropriately sized movement trays so you can move the whole unit together. This makes play move faster and will also make your army look much better. When doing this, you need to reconsider the playability, your strategy, and the actual mechanics of basing.

The first thing you'll need to do is choose the size of movement trays you need. This will depend on your Warhammer Army, and your playing style. Games Workshop provides some trays that are of common sizes, but for mostly smaller units. 1x5 for cavalry, 5x4 and a join smaller sizes for infantry. Many players are trying to mass units at least 10 wide now - this allows them to advantage from the Hordes rule which in the new Warhammer rules gives them an extra fighting rank. However, big units are expensive, and you loose flexibility. You need to move in formation and it gets in effect hard to move a big unit like this colse to a busy table. And, a large unit like this can limit the amount of units you have and leave you unable to cover all the threats you'll face on the battlefield. So, there are important trade-offs. For my large I'm sticking with 6x5. This is traditional, but very tried and tested.

Warhammer

I think the mechanics are a bit easier to understand. The movement tray needs to be of the accurate size; it needs to be rigid; it must be easy to pick-up; and the units must stay on it. The trick to retention the models on the tray is to magnetize the bases of the models and to use something that magnets will stick to on the movement tray. I chose to use washers, rare-earth magnets, Gale Force 9 mettalic rubber sheets, and Citadel's modular movement trays. The movement tray has two rigid plastic sheets that are already marked for the allowable base sizes so it's easy to quantum the movement trays to the desired size. The rubber steel sheets are flexible and have self adhesive production it easy to attach the sheets. I cut the plastic sheets with the rotary cutter on my Dremel. Then I traced and cut a steel sheet out of the right size, adhered it to the plastic sheet, and then trimmed it to match. I used #8 washers and 1/16th inch thick disk magnets because combined, they are close to the exact depth of the Games Workshop bases. The closer to the metallic sheet, the better the magnets will stick, so this is important. You want the magnet flush to the lowest of the base, if you can. Then, all I did was super glue (cyanoacrylate) the washer in place, and then the magnet. I used Insta-set accelerator on the glue to make it go faster.

The ensue is a movement tray that can even turn over and the models will stay on. This in effect helps game play!

Warhammer Armies - development and Magnetizing Movement Trays