Hi all, The Carnosaur assembly directions are awesome. They tell you that if you are doing a Scar-vet, you put one set of horns on the throne and use one type of head, and if you are doing an Oldblood, you use two sets of horns and do another head. It even tells you how to differentiate your assembly for the special character. That's all great. Now I am going back in time to 2009 and assembling my Stegadon kit as an Ancient Stegadon with blowpipes. It sucks that the directions don't even have part numbers, but I got over that. My question, though, is one of acceptability. What have you all seen as the 'acceptable trend' for which parts to use for which Stegadon variants? I'd like to use the big disc, but does that usually get paired with a character riding it or with an engine? How would folks feel about seeing an Ancient with no banner poles (that are soooooo easy to break in transport)? Basically, what is the generally accepted gentlemanly thing to do here?
Yes, the disk is usually associated with the Engine. Banner poles are purely decoration. Most people would probably associate more banners with a fancier/more expensive version of the Stegadon. This is what I USUALLY see for the variations. This is by no means official or even based off of tournament participation/standards. Baby Steg: giant bow, just banner poles in the back Ancient Steg: giant blowpipes, there is a single crescent shaped ornament with a serpent mouth at the top that rears up out of the rear center of the howdah, banner poles in the back 7th Ed EotG: disk, throne with Priest, banner poles, skink crew with banners 8th Ed EotG without Priest: haven't actually seen one on the table yet, but I would say just the disk and however many banners float your boat Skink Chief Steg: appropriate howdah weapon, either throne or the crescent shaped serpent ornament, however many banners you want Ultimately, I would say as long as the giant blowpipes are obvious and the character (if there is one) is noticeable you shouldn't have any difficulties. If you like the disk, combine it with the giant blowpipes. Just tell your opponent when you deploy and they should be cool with it. If they give you grief, tell them you weren't comfortable magnetizing the variants or spending the money on a model for each variant. Almost everyone should be able to relate to the latter excuse, at least.
Thanks, Silverbolt. Now, another one. The directions are really unclear about the skinks and their bits. It looks like you are meant to clip the end off of the blowguns and use the skink arm with the little partial blowpipe on it. It's hard to tell for sure or to know where to place these models, their arms, and the guns. Anyone else figured out the right way to do this?
Not exactly sure what you are geting at..? Why would you cut off the blow pipes ? and for what reason ?
When you build the stedadon to have two giant blowpipes, you assemble each one by gluing the two halves of each together. You end up with two weapons, each of which has two barrels. Each barrel ends in a tapered little cone shape. You then put the skinks together. There are 5 of them. Three of them get javelins and small knives. The other two each get one arm that has its hand holding what really looks like the cone shape of the blowpipes. On one side of the hand is the cone, and on the other is just a short bit of tube. It looks like you are supposed to cut off the end of one of the barrels on each giant blowpipe and then position the skink with his little tiny bit of pipe so that it replaces what you cut off. The problem is that the directions don't do a good job of actually showing you what you are supposed to do. So, I'm wondering what others have done for this part of the assembly.
As it turns out, there is actually a hand in there that is holding a handful of darts. These are the other two.
(looked st some close up pics of the sprue) Are you sure you are not looking at the skink arm holding the bottom half of the banner pole, it kinda looks like a blowpipe bit. other than that all I see is arms holding weapons, bolts, and darts: and one with the crank frr the giant bow.
I decided it was picture time! The lines connect the model arms to the instructions. Note that I included the sprue with the banner pole arms to show that those are not the ones I am talking about. Note how the arms on the models taper like the ends of the giant blowpipes and also have a bit of decorative pipe coming out the other side of the fist.
Yea I think you are right.... I searched around a bit and finaly found a pic where somebody used those arms....
lol, sounds like You haven't assembled any of the old metal models... (cutting, filing grinding, fiting, pinning, glueing.... cussing, reglueing)
Used to do things like that constantly when building models ~10 years ago. I'd say if the steg has blowpipes and the gold harlf moon fiectly above his head crest it's an ancient. I would argued hat since engines no longer require a priest the circle on the Howdah is generally the indicator for the engine, so it might be harder to make that work on just a normal ancient.
In my army I have a new plastic Ancient Stegadon. Worst model to put together ever! My friend had to help me assemble the Engine of the Gods! And we had bought it second hand so it had an assembled body with a few minor mistakes. He had the head with the mouth open with out the tongue and I couldn't fit the tongue back in! Sounds like this deserves the WORST MODEL TO PUT TOGETHER OF THE MONTH AWARD THE STEGADON
- - - - - - - - I used these arms when i was assembling the blowpipes. I think this is approximately what I did: 1) Cut off the unneeded mouthpiece from each blowpipe 2) Assemble the skink that's going to be firing the blowpipe but do not attach the 'holding/firing arm' 3) Glue the 'holding/firing arm' to the blowpipe but NOT the body of the skink. Ensure (as best you can) that the arm aligns to the skink as if the pipe and and skink were on the steggie. I don't think this needs to be super precise as you can adjust the pivot of the blowpipe to ensure that the top of the arm aligns with the chest of the skink. You just don't want the arm at 90 degree to the blowpipe 4) I painted both 'the blowpipe/firing arm' and 'the skink' separately. 5) I glued the blowpipe to the stegie with the skink in my other hand to ensure that they aligned. I just applied pressure to the top of the blowpipe to keep it in place until it set where I wanted it to. Making positional changes as required while I still could. 6) Glue the skink to the base. Use the tail to negotiate the skink into a position next to the firing arm. I don't think I even glued the firing arm to the skink it was enough that the skink was glued to the howdah. You can roughly see what's going on in my PLOG: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/just-back-form-the-chaos-wastes.13640/ There's also an overhead photo mid-battle that might help with positioning. I think that made it sound a lot more complicated than it actually was!!! It was just a bit fiddly
i found it to be pretty easy. it was my first of the newer plastic kits and it was a dream compared to the old ones I was used to. its nothing compared to the carnosaur, but I found the steg to be much easier to put together than the new terradon kit too.
That doesn't bode well - I've very nearly smashed my half built steg to pieces on numerous occasions! And I want some Rippers now that I've re-started my Lizards again. My issue with the Steg is the Howdah - it just will not go together. I'm stripping all of my stuff down and starting again so hopefully it will be a clean slate and it will all fit together perfectly this time...