Base size question

[Ruby]

So one of my many conversion ideas is to convert a dread lord onto a lizard men carnosaur. And that would be he's cold one mount. But the carnosaur's base is much bigger than a normal cold one's base. My question is it ok to make a models base different.

[Red...]

It's a convoluted answer to a fairly simple question, sadly.

Official GW law is that a model should be based upon the base it came with. Hence if you brought a pegasus back when pegasi bases were 40mm then the base size would be 40mm, but if you brought that identical model after their bases grew to 50mm, then the base size would be 50mm. How does that translate here? Well, it's hard to know - does it mean that your dreadlord should use the carnosaur's base size (as that was the base that the carnosaur came with) or the cold one's base size (as that is technically the model that the dreadlord should be riding) or that you can't do your conversion legally at all?

Moving beyond GW vagaries, standard convention tends to be that a model should be assumed to have the same base size (and indeed height/width etc, now that we have true LOS) as the most recent GW release of that model. That means that my tiny manticore with a 40mm base, while technically GW legal as it stands, usually gets treated as being a 100x50mm based monster with a big tall body. In your case, you would use whichever base fitted best for your carnousaur's body, and then treat the model as though it were a cold one for base size (and indeed general height and width) within games. It could be a good idea to have a spare dreadlord on cold one model in your army bag with you, so that you can replace the carnosaur conversion with him to calculate base size and LOS etc when it becomes controversial, and then swap him back out again once you have resolved the line of sight issue.

[Rakariel]

If you can find the old carno model it wouldn`t be all that hard fitting that on a cav base. As Red already said however if models get too much out of proportion to their usual size you could run into problems if your opponent feels you are "bending the rules". This however is of course mostly only the case, if your opponent is at a disadvantage. Most won`t argue if its you that loses out because of your models size however.

I actually would ask my gaming group if they are okay with it tbh. The new carnosaur is too big in any case tho, it would look pretty stupid trying to base a monster that size on a little cav base. If you like the model so much, why not leave it on the big base, put a Dreadlord on top of it and use it as a unit filler inside a big unit of Black Guard? This way you have your model and I guess it would look absolutely cool

[Ruby]

Thanks for the answers. I talked to my gaming group about it and they said no,because they did not want to fight the base rules.

[gamerlocke]

The Carnosaur looks like you might be able to position it so that it's standing up a little more than usual. Raise the back leg by placing it on a log or pile of rocks would get some of it's width out of the way from other models. I don't have the model exactly but you might be able to bent the back leg a bit and set it high enough to still give it a cool stance but it decrease the required base size. Might need to weight it down though with that heavy beast.