Friday, December 13, 2019

Litko Bases and a Dice Tower Too!


Litko dice tower


I ran out of my regular 2-inch square MDF bases that I use for my cavalry figures and my local FLGS did not have in stock. So what to do? I ordered what I needed from Litko Bases. For good measure, I also ordered a dice tower.

I could attach a house next to the tower and make a little vignette out of it.

My order arrived today, it only took about three days from order to deliver. Litko really does a good job on the delivery end of the business. Top notch customer service and great products make Litko hard to beat.

I want to paint and embellish the dice tower so that it looks like a building suitable for 18th Century warfare. I envision having four dice towers, one on each corner of my game table. The table rules would require that all dice be rolled in the dice tower or else the die roll does not count.

Searching for ideas on how to embellish the dice tower.
This one wouldn't work for obvious reasons.
Attaching a building to the other side of the tower might work
Not so good. It looks good but placing the add-on house next to the dice tray area
makes it hard to pick the dice out of the box.

Litko Figure Bases
I purchsed a 100-pack of 2-inch square bases to use for my cavalry units. I also needed some bases with a three inch frontage to use for small two stand cavalry units.

Two-inch square bases for my Russian Horse Grenadiers.

Three-inch frontage with a two-inch depth bases for my Gendarmerie de France cavalry.

Christmas Shopping at Target - For Terrain?
I went to the local Target Store today to buy some outdoor Christmas lights. Whilst there, I went rummaging through the Christmas ornaments section to see if I could find any potential wargame terrain items.

I found these galvanized steel towers, each with an American West style of wind mill. I won't need the windmills because these weren't used in Europe during the 18th Century. They would look nice in an 1800s farm or cowtown in the American West.

A pair of candleholders would make for a good town gate for a walled city.

The towers measure 5-inches from the base to the roof eaves, and 8-inches to the peak of the roof. The diameter of the can is 3.25 inches. The roof already has a tile pattern on it so I could just paint it without any embellishments. I don't think that I want to get too involved in geometry to try and tile the roof myself, but we shall see.

I will prime the metal black and either glue paper stone wall around the tower or slather it will Red Devil Pre-Mixed Spackle for wallboards, then paint a stucco color. I would imagine that the twin towers would be glued to a thin plywood base for starters. Then I can make a section of wall that attaches the two towers together at about the height of the second story of windows. The I could make a half round arch over the entrance.

Once the towers and gateway are made and based, then I could make sections of town walls that would abut the gateway section.





4 comments:

  1. Unusual and clever dice tower!

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  2. I've never used a dice tower in 50 years of gaming , may order one for Christmas !

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  3. Jim, I have a dice tower that I covered with paper detailing printed from the excellent files of paper buildings from Dave Graffam models from Wargames Vault.

    The pages of these files can have varied textures, timber overlays, windows, doors, lights, vents, roofs, etc. I looked for sheets that suited the shape and size of the tower, printed them out, cut & pasted as needed & that looks pretty good.

    Then a quick coat of varnish to seal it all when the PVA glue dried.

    I even printed roof tiles for the top internal partition and floor boards to use on the interior partitions. These were applied with some cussing before final assembly of the tower. You have to allow for the area that slots in - if this is papered, it just wont go! The collecting area at the base of the tower I covered with flagstones pattern.

    I chose to make it look like a weathered stone & brick tower so it doesn't look too out of place on medieval to 19th century battlefields.

    Cheers, Rohan.

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  4. Some good ideas for terraining a dice tower. But you're lucky, my friends just mock my dice tower...probably because my dice rolling with it is just as bad as it is without using the dice tower. But I invest so much obvious belief in it's ability to produce the goods so I probably deserve to be mocked. It does need decorating so I might try making it look like a building as well. I'll watch keenly to see how you get on, if I may?

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