From MilesR: Wizards Tower (500 Points)

 Maybe I have a little more left to post - let's see it's so messy in here right now.  Oh here we go - a small Wizards Tower.  Well it's small when compared to the real thing.  In terms of miniatures, it's pretty big as it sits on a 22 inch square base.

A good friend of mine, Steve M, asked if I would be interested in building something for him to use on his Twitch channel.  He streams out D&D game sessions and seems to have real traction.  I still think this internet thing is just a fad and we'll go back to rotary phones but kids these days....

Anyway the channel is called CastleMac and can be found on Youtube or TwitchTV.  Yeah, I don't know what Twitch is either.

Please don't spill the beans about the Tower as it's meant to be a surprise for his players.  I'm pretty sure the RPG world doesn't spend a lot of time over on our side of the internet.

Steve wanted a simple tower with 3 playable levels.  I, of course, elected to make it both much bigger and much more complicated to build.  Why? 'Cause that's just how I roll, my dudes and dudettes*

* Now that I'm officially building terrain for show business, I need to adopt the patois of the entertainment industry.  It's nothing personal, it's just business.  I will also be referring to all of you as my "peeps".  For more formal occasions "posse" will be substituted for "peeps" in keeping with the norms of celebrity society.  No need to thank me - my newfound celebrity has many benefits for each and every one of you (after signing my IP licensing agreement, of course).  Just to let you in on an industry secret - I'm thinking of co-branding a line of terrain with the Kardashians.  Mums the word as I haven't been able to pitch the idea to them just yet.  That stupid restraining order is really harshing my mellow.

The Tower has four removable levels, starting with the roof, accessed via a hatch.

The roof leads down to level three - you can see the ladder leading up to the roof in the upper right corner of the picture.  The ladder is design to be able to hold figure bases in place as a character climbs it.

The stairway to the left leads down to....

Level two (I'm being totally creative in level names as one would expect from a show business terrain maker).  This level has some arrow slits to shoot out of and yet another stairway that goes down to the bottom level.

Which is known to the locals as "level one".  The doors are hinged so they can open and close.  I purposely left the interior open to give Steve the maximum flexibility for game design.  I may add some removable partitions once I've had a long rest from my foam building adventuring.

I really like how the exterior of the Tower came out and experimented with a number of ways to created vines and moss.

I've got a pretty extensive collection of ground textures and other scenery supplies as one would expect of a show business related special effects shop.

Ahhh the internet, it lets even the most mundane of us declare celebrity and act accordingly.

How many EPS foam bricks did I use in making this beast - let's says between 3,400 to 3,500.  My weapon of choice in terrain building is the Proxxon Hot Wire "Thermocut". If you build a lot of terrain go buy one right now.  Go on - click the link and buy it now.  We'll all wait for you to get back.

I think this came out rather nicely.  The levels slot into each other so it's very stable.  You can see a few spots in some of the pictures where the Matte Medium is still drying and it shows through as a little white. It will dry clear and doesn't yellow like some PVA glues can do over time.  There's also some minor detailing to complete but that will have to wait as I need a break from the EPS fumes.  Actually, when using a Hotwire foam cutter wear a respirator - it's important to do so and even a moron like me does so.

So how big is this beast.  it's got a diameter of 17.5 inches and overall height of 22 inches.
Now, who in class can tell me how to calculate the volume of a cylinder?  Anyone?

Come on I would think someone on this group would know.  OK here's the formula:

Pi times radius squared times height.  (I don't know how to type the "pi" symbol)

So with a radius of 8.75 inches and if we assume for simplicity that pi is approximately 3.142 - oh  is there a question? - sigh - why yes, Ray, pie is very delicious and I wish I had some too, but we're not talking about that kind of pi.  Where were we, ahh yes just at the good part - math!

Radius = 8.75
Pi approximation 3.142
Height = 22 inches

Total volume in cubic inches 5,292.3063 inches (ok I'm showing off with the four decimal places but it does impress the ladies)

Given our standard terrain cube has 216 cubic inches, so that equates to 24.5 "cubes" or 490 points.  In the past I've discount some terrain submissions (like the tree plates) for "air".  I'm going to suggest not doing so for this custom build because of all the F'ng bricks I had to cut, trim and glue in place,  so many bricks - I see them in my sleep now.  To paraphrase Mr Conrad "Oh the tiny masonry, the masonry........"

This post should take me over 5,000 points, which is a new personal best and I may leave it there.

Thanks!



TamsinP:

Holy cow! No, Miles, I'm not referring to you, oh great terrain-crack purveyor to showbiz, merely exclaiming at the sheer size of that tower.

That is a most impressive gaming piece and I'm not going to argue with your suggested scoring and add 20 celebrity bonus points. So, 510 points.

However, I should note that historically the stonework of castles and towers would normally be limewashed on the exterior and either plastered (how? Booze back then was weak-sauce!) or paneled on the interior. I am therefore deducting 10 points for inaccurate representation, leaving you with 500 points. And let that be a lesson to you!