When I first set about building the Leviathan I really fell in love with the Baneblade kit, and I finally came round to getting one to build as a Baneblade. The thing is I don't see the Praetorian's as being big users of the Baneblade, instead trusting in Lighter Armoured Cavalry and older Heavy Tanks such as the Malcador, so I don't want to go to town on having several models. So I decided on using magnets to get flexibility to have the option to use several Baneblade Chasis varients without much investment - I'll probably do a second chasis in this fashion and will revamp my existing FW Mars Pattern Baneblade for a company of three such vehicles.
The first and most obvious thing to do was too allow the main weapon to be switched between Baneblade Cannon and Helblade Cannon, a very easy swap with a disc magnet inside the Manlet, and another inside the turret mounting for the manlet.
Of course this presents a problem of Sponsons, these I fitted with much smaller disc magnets inside the track assembly and within the sponson itself (though I've not got a complete set of Sponsons as an alternative/additional set yet), the armour plates were likewise fitted giving me flexibility to have no sponsons (for the extra armour), one pair of sponsons or two pairs of sponsons in either the fore or aft positions.
I did'nt want too stop there either though.
As I've got a spare upper hull section from the Leviathan I've made this swapable with an additional pair of large magnets, one fore, one aft mounted on cross beams (which also provide additional structural strength when the plate is not in place), I'll modify this hull section into a Shadowsword style hull (i.e. no hull weapons or turret, instead a mount for a single main fixed gun) which will also have swapable weapons allowing me to field a Shadowsword, Stormblade or Stormsword potentially. The rear engine block I've also left swapable with a single magnet on the aft cross beam, I did this when news of the Stormlord from Apocolyopse Reloaded first came about, which indicated a Chimera style layout for the Baneblade Chasis Transport variant - though this has since proven not to be quite accurate I've left it as an option with a view to attempting some sort of alternative layout on this idea in the future.
And with that it's job done for the time being, I'm gonna be tinkering with a spare turret on and off for an Imperial counterpart to the Chaos Plague Reaper (i.e. a turreted Inferno Cannon as mounted on Imperial Titans), I'll come back to painting in due course - other things are on top of the pile.
