Recently I went through all my X-wing minis and attached magnets to their bases. I've seen it done a few times, I just finally went ahead and did it myself based on a thread I found somewhere on the FFG boards.
There are a couple of reasons for doing this:
1. It solves virtually all issues with loose/broken/misaligned pegs.
2. It allows me to mount pretty well ANYTHING on an X-wing flight stand, so long as I can fix a magnet to it.
3. Swanky banking action.
My Shopping List:
I used Gorilla Glue to put these on all of my small ships:
These on a bunch of small pegs: (I have a ton of ships, so I only did 25 or so pegs - I mostly play at home with my son so I need to be able to field two lists at once and they often clock in at well over 100 points per side, so I erred on the side of extra.)
These on all the big ships:
(Note: The Firespray required a bit of drilling to fit it in properly - detailed below)
And these on a few big pegs: (Again, ton of ships, so I only did six large bases)
The work was quick and easy - I did it all assembly-line style over two sittings of maybe an hour or two each to do around 60 small and eight large-based ships. I did get a bunch of glue on my hands, though.
I went all in and broke off the existing pegs on all of my ships to replace them with the ring magnets. (Except the 2400, the geometry on the bottom was such that it made more sense to just glue the magnet to the end of the peg.) I clipped off the connector at the end of the flight stand sticks and glued the appropriate sized steel ball to the ends.
I had to drill a hole in the Firespray to get the magnet to sit nicely in where the peg was. Once the magnet was crammed in, MOST of the damage is covered, but if you really look, you can tell. A little paint should fix it right up, and when it's mounted on the stand, the inner section where it got drilled isn't what I'm looking at, so it totally works out.
It might not be a solution for everyone, but I couldn't be happier with the results and now I don't have any issues with broken/warped/misaligned pegs. Plus, it helped re-invigorate my son's interest now that the ships are a little more dynamic, so we got to play a little more. Hooray!
Incidentally, in the aforementioned FFG thread,someone else had confirmed with FFG that replacing the pegs with magnets would NOT affect their tournament legality. I suppose it's possible that might change, but it seems like it would take a very special kind of jackass to kick a person out of a tournament because they didn't know how magnets work.
Buncha Pics: They're not all as good as I wish they were, but I don't really have any more time to spend on them at the moment, so this is as good as it gets.
Rebels:
B-wing Detail:
As you can see, so long as there's just a little overhang on the steel ball, the B-wing will mount nicely. I was pretty lazy, so I just glued the ring magnets over the engines. Another option would be to glue the magnet to the end of the bent peg that used to stick out the back. I'm pretty happy with it as they are, though.
Small Rebel Mounts:
For the rest of the small Rebel craft, the magnets go pretty much right where you expect them to. The X-wing magnets are on a slope, but once it gets mounted on the steel ball, it works perfectly. I put the magnet for the HWK a little closer to it's natural center of gravity.
Large Base Rebels:
So yeah, I'll cover a B-wing's engines and not think twice about it. But do you know what's ALWAYS bugged me? The quads on the underside of the Falcon being mounted backwards. If they were just POINTED backwards, that would have been fine, but since the gunner is supposed to be sitting in the window, aiming more or less straight down the barrels, I always hated how they had to be mounted to accommodate the factory peg. So with a little careful prying and cutting and gluing, I reattached the lower quads the right way and I'm MUCH happier with it.
Imperial Ships:
Small Imperial Mounts:
Like their Rebel counterparts, the magnets get mounted pretty much right where you'd expect. It's a little tricky to get them just exactly right on the TIE balls, that's where I got the most glue on my hands, but it all worked out pretty well.
Large Imperial Mounts:
The Firespray required a little extra work (described below) but the others were pretty straight-forward.
Magnetizing the Firespray:
I took a series of in-progress shots with my phone and put them together as a picturegraphical thinger to show my process. I can go into more detail if anyone needs, but it really is pretty straight-forward. Start slow with the drill, because MOST of what you end up drilling out is really the boarding ramp section and whatever it is that's "above" that. A firm grip, start slowly, and you'll be fine. I'm not sure how hollow the Firespray is - I stopped drilling pretty much where the magnet would sit flush where the peg used to be, but it occurs to me that you MIGHT be able to sink it in a little deeper and hide the magnet a little more, if you're into that sort of thing. (No promises, though, I didn't go in at all, really.)
Side Benefits:
So another neat thing about buying a bunch of magnets and making magnet-able stands is that you can now drop any old thing you want into a flight stand and use that for your game. So far I've only done this Senator's Shuttle sort of thinger, but I do plan to make 3D asteroids and use them on flight stands for missions where we want the asteroids to move around. Point the base in a semi-random direction and let them move 1 straight per turn, or somesuch.
Afterthoughts:
Am I pleased with the results? Yes, yes I am. The one thing that needs mentioning, though, is storage. I have all my ships lumped together by type in compartments of a Plano box. If you can separate everything into it's own bin, you will have no trouble at all. The magnets interact a little, but not enough to cause any problems. Mine get lumped together, though, and some of the Rebel ships, especially, get a little intimate.
Y-wings and A-wings will join together nicely, if the polarity of the magnets will accommodate, but they're sturdy enough to be just fine. Everyone else is a little awkward, but I'm not worried about most of them.
I have to admit, that I am a LITTLE worried about the X-wings and their delicate cannons. So far it hasn't been an issue, but if you're planning on magnetizing your collection this way AND travelling with them, you might want to make sure that your X-wings are each in their own compartment.
Other than that, I have no reservations at all.
If anyone has any questions or would like me to clarify something, please let me know.
