…or as I think might be more appropriate Magnetadon, on account of the fact the model contains 49 magnets of various sizes. The magnets allow the model to be assembled into all three types of stegadon.
Each head has two magnets suspended inside the head cavity on a piece of sprue that was shaped as a backwards C and glued in place. The body side is also a piece of sprue similarly shaped. Rather than magnets I’ve used a piece of metal on the body meaning the magnets don’t have to line up which proved a difficulty in other places. The piece of metal is actually a broken craft knife blade. I got the fit by carving fixing the magnets on the metal blade and slowly paring the sprue inside the head back until the fit was snug. Then glued the magnets to the sprue inside the head.
The top level of the howdah has a magnet in each leg and a paired magnet in the mounts on the stegadon body. A large magnet is placed in the base underneath the howdah matching another on the body. This forms a pretty strong bond. This was done as the banners on the top howdah add greatly to the height of the model and I felt this would allow it to be stowed more easily.
The shield and the crossbow each have two magnets that roughly match two magnets on the front of the lower howdah. They don’t line up perfectly and the lower howdah has a warp in it (probably not fitted correctly when I glued it) however the magnets are large and the attraction is strong enough to hold them in place.
The engine of the gods has two small magnets in the base matching two in the floor of the upper howdah and there are magnets on the steps that which allow the shaman to clip in place (with magnets in his feet). I built a throne from plasticard ands some bitz left over from the slaan so that the chieftan could stand on (again using magnets in the steps matching magnets in the chieftans feet). This is because the throne for the chieftan is normally made from pieces used in the engine.
For the blowpipes I carefully drilled holes into the corner posts where they are normally mounted and placed long pins in the base of the blowpipes that fit into the holes. This seems to work well and doesn’t use more magnets.
One of the skinks has a magnet in his arm socket allowing him to swap a banner/standard for a javelin and there are four other magnets in the floor of the howdah allowing for skinks (all who have one or two magnets in their feet) to be placed on the howdah.
Lastly I created some bases for the chieftan and the shaman so they can be converted to regular miniatures whenever they are not employed on the stegadon.
