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So I've started an eldar army with the start collecting boxes. Within the first day the fire prism snapped its basest the top of the stim. I did some googling and all I can find is to glue some magnets on to the stim and drill some magnets into the model. I did this and it works okay but gives the model a sloppy angle. I even double up'd thr magnets for a better hold. Long story short I'm looking for something stronger and more consistent for the rest of the army. Anyone have any better tutorials or ideas? There has to be a better way. Part of me is thinking of getting some metal rod from the hardware store and using that.

Metal rod sounds good, 1/8" brass rod from one of the large round bases into a hole drilled into the bottom of the model should work. I did this with a Riptide model that was jumping. She is as solid as a rock.



(Skimmer bases suck, GW really needs to beef them up, maybe make them an X like the flight bases.)

Yeah I'm thinking brass is easier to cut than steel rod.

Hawk war games widgets glued to the bottom of the model will then fit on the peg nicely,and it can easily be removed for storage.

Is it just the little 1mm-ish nubbin on top that snapped off?

Widen the hole on the skimmer to 3mm. The model will sit about 5-6mm lower down the stem and be much more supported (rather than having ALL of its mass supported by that 1 cubic mm of plastic.).

If that fails, use a secret weapon widget and post (3") or something similar. They use a 12mm acrylic post instead of the GW flight stand peg.

May I suggest a simple solution?



This is something I used back in the early 2000's and have used it again recently. Skip the stupid, idiotic flying base altogether. I use a simple tri-pod method. Drill holes in the bottom, widen until you can fit the "bottom" of the flight stand in. Clip off the tiny little nub which would normally be at the top of the flight stand. Glue in place.

Vehicle sits perfectly about 1.5" off the table. Note that depending on where you drill you use two different size flight stand legs. My Wave Serpents sit completely flush. Using three pegs also allows them to sit easily on hills or difficult terrain etc.

You also don't see the large round base during the game.

Simply pinning the broken off stem on back to the support stem.

What about this?
It's super sturdy and easily removeable for transportation.



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Or there's always a nice scenic base with an off centre contact point.




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I have used long flat magnets on my Land Speeders, but they have the underside sensor thingy to glue it to.
I stick a big magnet inside the floor before assembling, so it'll be too late unless you can open the back doors.

I have my own relatively simple solution for my Eldar skimmers, what I did is took the two stand posts from the base, and put the shorter one in the original slot, Pre-Pinned to give it rigidity. The longer stem, I drilled a socket into the skimmer base, clipped off the original pin because it sits at a slight angle, and drilled a pin into the second stem, so that there's two points of contact on the model, and it's removable to avoid it breaking in transit.

 Elbows wrote:
May I suggest a simple solution?

That is a very elegant solution indeed. The flight stems tend to break at the narrowest point, the top, and by inverting them you can build a much better contact area between the bottom of the model and the base, and as you say, the three legs let you balance the model far better on terrain.

Thanks. With the holes drilled in and using the bottom of the pegs, the solutions ends up being extremely robust/sturdy. Very stable as well. I've been very pleased with the results. I used the tripod idea back in 2001 or so but I didn't drill them back then, just clipped them flat and glued them to the base. They were still robust but the drilled holes are added security.

The only minor issue is that you can't disassemble them for storage/movement, but the overall footprint is much smaller than the large flying base.

I have to agree, Elbows, that's a pretty good idea. I'd have opted for it myself if not for my own solution that I'd gotten used to.. but then I got very good with my pin vise and kinda worked out the rest of things.