Friday, January 17, 2014

Friday Rucht Hour: The Alchemist's Tower

Ask and ye ask receive…

Earlier one of our posters asked for some posts on terrain and building terrain. Well, here we go. What we have on deck is the Alchemist's Tower! It's meant to be a piece of terrain for Warmachine, but it could serve any purpose, really. Can't take credit for this one. The credit goes entirely to Nick, whose gaming table we saw recently. 


First off, the bottom of the building is made from hirst arts bricks. The house, of course, can be detached from the tower itself. The house is made up of a variety of materials. The windows are simple Kobblestone miniatures decor, glued onto the walls, which are foam. The planks of wood you see here are strips of balsa, each one lovingly placed to resemble pieces of timber. Check out that door! He could have ordered a door, but nope…he just built one out of balsa. 



The roof tiles are strips of plastic. Instead of cutting and placing each tile on the roof individually, he cut  long strips of plastic and then sliced them along the edges, to give it that uneven, late-medieval look. So, each row of tiles you see is really just one long strip of plastic. Even up close, though, it's hard to tell. It looked to me like he had placed each roof tile down individually. On the roof there, you can see a bit from a Cygnar model to serve as the tower's steampunk weathervane. 


The round tower pieces below are hirst bricks, of course. They are arranged so that they resemble a staircase that goes up into the main house itself. No expense was spared on the details here! You could stage a heroic swashbuckling fight on the spiral staircase if you wanted!


Since it's supposed to evoke a Warmachine vibe, to give it that steampunk feel, Nick embedded some brewery scenery into the house itself. Rather clever and only really possible when you build your house brick by brick like Nick did.  


All for now. Let us know if you want to see more terrain techniques! 



4 comments:

  1. Yeah, I'm surprised there's no comments on this one, it's really friggin' cool!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Definitely agree Mik, this is a really sweet piece of terrain! I do have to ask though how stable is it? I know that the Hirst blocks are quite heavy but I would be nervous about that freak accident where the tower gets knocked over and lands on my army.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's quite stable. The hirst bricks are indeed heavy, which lends to their stability. But you ask a great question - the top part of the tower is made primarily of foam. So, since your base is much heavier than your top, it makes the whole thing very secure. Also, if the top were to ever fall off, you'd have a foam top collapsing on your army, maybe scattering some minis, not crushing them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Super awesome piece there!! I shall take inspiration from it for my ongoing "docktown" project for SBH!! Really impressive work on the roof shingles there. magnificent work sir!

    ReplyDelete