What on earth are Sprue doing?

Really pleased to have gotten a supply of these - the four ‘flagpoles’ are incredibly useful and have solved one particular building issue….

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….I purchased the first edition of Games Workshop Epic 40K game along with the original version of Adeptus Titanicus. I had a lot of fun with both until it all went very “Games Workshopy” - lots of supplements, add one and increasingly expensive models - and the collections of both were disposed of. True to form, at the time I remember using many of the component parts from both games for a variety of things - the weapons from Adeptus formed the basis of a couple of fleets of starships - but there was one piece in particular that was extremely useful. It is also a piece I have been trying to get a hold of for a number of years. 

The piece in question is a figure base base sprue. The bases for the figures at the time were 20mm square with five circular recesses - aligned like the five on a D6 - to drop the figures into. Also on the sprue were four ‘flagpoles’ used to identify command bases. It was these that I was after, not the bases, just the ‘flagpoles’. If you look closely at the picture above you can see that each of these has what looks like a muzzle brake on one end - this fits into the base - and a flat circular tab on the other. I used loads of these for weapons on a vast array of scratch built star fighters based on a combination of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. I have a huge surplus of these as of the four bases on a sprue only one had the hole to affix a flagpole so there were three spare from every sprue.

The spaceships and star fighters have long gone - around thirty odd years long gone - but I always remembered those flagpoles and for something very specific for the American Civil War ship collection.

Spar Torpedoes.

I have tried all manner of things to fashion a spar torpedo mount but nothing I tried seemed to look right and whilst using these ‘flagpoles’ may seem like a cop out they certainly fit is with the aesthetic look of my models. They are, after all, purely representational!

My plan is to fit both of the Atlanta models I have completed and also the C.S.S. Webb. I will also be able to use these for a few other models currently under consideration. I picked up 21 sprues - no bases, just the flagpoles - from a chap on eBay for next to nothing so I will have plenty to use going forwards.