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Monday 7 January 2013

Build unto me...

 ... a temple of epic proportions!




Well its a start anyway!

So Christmas proved fruitful in Wargaming terms as my family kindly clubbed together to get me 8 molds from the fantastic Hirst Arts.


As you can see I've had a go at casting my first blocks and they came out rather well. Might have to track down a local source of Cristacal R (the high strength plaster I'm using) though as the postage cost me about the same as the 5kg bag I bought...

The molds I went for include the Egyptian Tower Mold #93, Wood Shingle Roof Mold #240, Wooden Plank Mold #220, Wizard's Tower Mold #50, Cracked Floor Tiles Mold #203, Octagon Tower Mould  #63, Dragon's Inn Mold #51 and the Wall Builder Mold #200.

Other than the Egyptian Tower Mold (more of which later) I figured they'd give me lots of flexibility in building Old World style buildings from cottages and Inns to Towers and additional fortifications for my Mighty Fortress, and maybe even some dungeon tiles...


The blocks I've cast up are from the aforesaid Egyptian Tower mold and the Cracked Floor Tiles mold because I want to build this...

...to include the Rigg's Shrine scenario from the Second Citadel Compendium in my Return of the Magnificent Sven campaign.


Spot the similarities?


This is going to be a rather massive build as I intend on constructing all six floors that are detailed in the floor plans included in the scenario.


The Ground floor may prove a little tricky as it is actually below ground level...

The instructions for the Egyptian tower say you need to make 18 castings of the mold to have enough bricks - judging by the picture it looks like this might just about comprise the top couple of floors of the four towers of the shrine! Guess what I'll be doing in between waiting for paint to dry on whatever minis I'll tackling over the next month or so.

I've yet to work out dimensions for each floor but the idea will be for it to comprise most of the playable area on the table. I'll be constructing each floor as separate pieces with some way of allowing miniatures to be placed on different floors simultaneously. It'd be great to do this with each floor stacked up to form the whole building but I haven't really planned out how I'd do this as yet. The alternative of course is to make the floors stackable but lay each floor out side by side on the table during play so on multiple levels can be used at the same time - not as visually striking but a lot easier to build.

Suggestions and any experiences you have had with similar projects would be most welcome!

I may attempt something a little smaller like the Wizard's Tower while I'm casting up enough blocks and assembling sufficient slaves to allow building on the Shrine to commence, as a way of familiarising myself with working with this new medium...


8 comments:

  1. Nice to see a fellow user of Hirst Arts blocks. Top notch stuff! It looks great, but takes a lot of patience to finish a big project. I don't own any of the egyptian molds myself, so am eager to see your project progress.

    Though I fear you will soon realize that you own far too few molds... :)

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    1. Ha ha - I was afraid of that! It was quite a tricky process whittling my choices down to 8 to keep postage costs down.

      I reckon the shrine should keep me busy for a while like you say!

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  2. Welcome to the club Thantsants. Looking forward to see the temple.

    Maybe you could make the whole building stackable. Each layer representing a floor level. The tower in "The Shadow of Koles Lorr" uses the same principle. It consists out of 4 different components which can be stacked on top of each other to form the tower.

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    1. Cheers DF - I think that's the way I'm going to go.

      I also had vague ideas of having "cutout" sections that could be removed from the superstructure so I could game on multiple levels while still retaining the main part of the structure of the shrine on the table.Think this might be a little tricky though...

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  3. This looks promising! I'm looking forward to seeing it built up and fought over by Amazons and Vikings and Frog People and such. Been meaning to try out a Hirst Arts kit for some time. I've never worked with one before...Happy building!

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    1. Thanks Mouse - don't forget the Lizardmen and Troglodytes too.

      Not to mention the possibility of a conquistador style Bretonnian force turning up looking for gold and the even more valuable commodity of super size frogs legs! ;)

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  4. ambitious eh? It's going to be awesome when done.

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  5. Cheers!

    Its just that little word "when"...

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