Magnetizing: Crisis Suit Commander

Now I magnetize all of my crisis suits using 3x1 mm round rare earth magnets as standard, this means that I can switch my lists between different suit configs without having to buy lots of suits that are equipped differently.

My thoughts recently turned to the Crisis Suit Commander box, now this box contains everything that the standard Crisis Suit box does with the addition of a few bits of lead wargear and 2 lead Commander heads. I realised that if I magnetised these heads and the head sockets of the suits that I could run my suits as either a Commander or as a normal Crisis Suit. The below is a quick breakdown of how I went about this, hope you find it useful.

I firstly assembled the main body of the Crisis Suit, including the arms, and allowed the polystyrene cement to set. Now, I've seen some guides that recommend drilling out the holes for the magnets before assembling the suit but I find it easier to do it this way.



Next step was to drill out the holes for the magnets. You will need to drill into the base of the neck on the head and into the socket where the head will sit on the Suit, this is important to try and avoid the suit looking like it has an elongated neck when compared to suits whose head is just glued straight into the socket. I use a fairly low power hand drill to do this and a 4mm drill bit it's important to stress that you need to be very careful at this point as mistakes can be....painful!




One of the trickiest parts of the process is gluing the magnets in place, as they will be attracted to anything metal most normal modelling tools, such as files, are out of the question so I just use a biro lid to hold the magnet in place until the super glue starts to take. The other issue is making sure the magnets are aligned correctly as it is very easy to glue all the magnets in place only to find they repel each other rather than attract each other! I usually colour the same side of my magnets in with a purple felt tip, it's very easy to see that they are aligned correctly as I ensure that the magnets on the suits are purple side facing out and the magnets on the wargear/heads are purple side facing inwards.




It is also bearing in mind that you need to leave enough time for the glue to dry before trying to see if the magnets are correctly glued in otherwise you may end up with the magnets flying out of the head and adhering to the still wet superglue in the socket! Once the glue has dried, and all being well, you should now have a suit which you can swap between being a commander or a normal crisis suit.




As the Crisis Suit Commander comes with 2 Commander Heads this means that you are able to get 2 Commanders out of 1 Commander and 1 Standard Crisis Suit box which saves a few pennies over buying 2 Commander box set's as they are about half again as much as the standard one.