Sunday Terrain Piece 2: Adeptus Astartes Hero Shrine

For this Sunday's piece, you will need to devote a little more time and money than last week's crater project, but this project can add a nice centerpiece to your cityfight board. Let's start with the supplies you will need:

A pack of cork tiles (6-7 USD)
Hot glue gun *High Temp, mini sticks* (5-7 USD)
Mini-glue sticks (5-6 USD)
Greco-pillars *found in wedding cake supply aisle* (5 USD)
Squared-off craft sticks (4 USD)
PVA glue *aka white glue, elmer's glue, etc*(.50 USD)
Craft paints *black, gray, white* (.50 USD each)
A leftover plastic miniature for the statue
Plastic bits *to make the bell, statue stand, etc*

The first step is to make your building template. Each floor has to be the same size, so cut out 2 squares of equal size from your cork tiles. The left-over pieces from the tile can be used to make the wall sections to the upper floor. Using the hot glue, attach the four pillars to the four corners of your bottom floor. Make sure they are all oriented in the same direction, as some pillars have distinct sides. Glue your top floor on next before you start on making the walls of the top floor. Leave a gap in the walls for an entrance to the top floor. Also, it makes the piece more usable game-wise if you make the walls as ruined facades, rather than complete walls. This makes it easier to place miniatures in the tower. You could be really adventurous and make a removable roof if you wanted complete walls, but that was a little more involved (and complete) than I wanted this project to be. With ruined walls, it blends much more seamlessly into my ruined-cityscape.

Next, its time to make the statue. I used a bottle cap from a 20 oz drink, and glued a miniature to the top with the hot glue. A small, square piece of cork makes a good piece to attach an inscription block for the statue. Glue this whole bit into the center of the bottom floor.

The following step is quite tedious, but produces spectacular results. Before you start, carve a hole in the floor of the 2nd story that goes through completely. Then, cut pieces of the craft sticks so that they match the length of your 2nd floor and lay them down in the similar fashion to a wood floor laminate. When you get to the hole in the floor, cut a whole piece to fit across the entire length, but break it unevenly. The remove a piece so that the edges of the boards end over the hole, but broken and jagged-like. Once you have finished laying the entire floor, use extra sticks as a trim border around the perimeter, to clean up the appearance of any mis-matched sizes. If you make a roof to the 2nd floor, make sure you make a bigger hole in that too, to give the illusion that a bomb or some other projectile penetrated through the building. Adding a few vertical boards in the corners helps too.

Use some crumbled cork to add rubble to the bottom floor. Use plastic bits to create a bell in the tower, and glue that down. Or use a bell of appropriate size, if available. How you create access to the 2nd floor is up to you: a ladder, staircase, or lift are all acceptable, some are just more difficult than others to make. I made a staircase, by cutting out 2 cork forms and gluing rectangular steps to the forms. That project was separate, and a little out of the scope of this tutorial however.

Now, all your cork sections are not going to be very sturdy. This is remedied by sealing the cork with PVA glue. Watered down a little, the PVA glue spreads pretty well. Use it to cover all of the cork sections and seal it. Don't get any on the wood floor, though, or you can't use a wash to darken and age the wood later.

After the glue dries, all that is left is the paint! Start with black or gray, your preference, and drybrush the next lighter color on.

The rest of the minor details are up to you. Now you have a dominating tower that rules the cityscape!