Building a 15mm dwarven tower

I've been building my dwarven army in 15mm for some time now and decided they needed some sort of tower of their own that would later be expanded into a larger fortification. I did some basic sketches and came up with this sort of odd cantilevered tower. I thought it would look sufficiently foreign while also looking pretty cool.

Frank Lloyd Wright I ain't...

I diligently cut out all the foam pieces I needed and mocked up the design. Frankly, it looked like crap. The whole cantilever thing just didn't look right, the proportions didn't work -- it was a complete fail across the board. From there, I took the pieces I had and began playing around with them in different configurations, cut some basic stairs to add to it and finally settled on an interesting multi-level design.

Here's the basic shape.

I like all the staircases that add visual interest. I've added some dwarves for scale. I was also careful to make sure the stands fit on all the different openings. Nothing worse than making a piece of terrain and then realizing your basic stand size doesn't fit in half the spaces.

With the base walls/shape done, now it was time to add the crenelations. The green foam is in 1" thick pieces sandwiched together; the pink is 1/8 foam that I glue to the green.

The walls start to take shape.

One point of note: I added the texture to the pink wall sections before gluing them on. I use the rectangular brass tube you can see in the photo above. For the pink sections, I used a small piece and just rapidly stiple all over it that gives it a small fieldstone look. For the larger sections below, I have a larger diameter rod that looks like bigger stones. I didn't even mess with carefully doing every stone in line -- just did a rapid approach, overlapping in some places.

One of the green pieces had a chunk out of the corner. I used my finger to peel away more from the other layers to make a crumbling section or perhaps an area that has taken a hit from a catapult or something. For glue, I use LocTite power grab (or something like that). It has strong grabbing power and you don't have to hold anything together and takes a while to dry, so you can actually readjust pieces as needed (and also knock them askew if you aren't careful). 

More of the tower takes shape. I have a hot wire cutter that I free hand the crenelations on. The dwarves are eager to move in. 

The walls are done on this side.

I added some small stone supports under the shorter section here to make it look a little less odd and add some visual interest.

Note the overhanging front section. My plan all along was to make this a gatehouse and added gates on both front and back. The overhang helps protect the gate, allowing defenders to use murder holes to pour all kinds of nasty things on orcs trying to break in.

With all the walls textured and glued on, next came the priming. I started using black craft paint, but was running low and it was taking forever. So I switched to a spray can (those of you who have worked with foam are screaming NOOOOOOO!!!! because the chemicals that propel the paint melt the foam) -- actually, you can use spray paint, but you have to keep it about a foot to two feet away and do quick bursts with it and never pool the paint. I sprayed the whole structure then had to go back and touch up a few areas with my brush and craft paint. I did partially melt one set of stairs (they are the most vulnerable with their finer detail), but it wasn't enough to require replacing -- it actually made them look a little worn and crumbly.

With the tower primed black, I drybrushed a basic gray over it and then hit a few spots with a bleached sand color. I also handpainted the area around the arrow slit to make it pop out more.

Here's the final result.

You can see the gate I added to the front. The arrow slit is just a carefully textured pattern around a small slit I cut using my foam cutter. There are several doors on the upper level --- for now, they are just painted brown. I'll add better doors later. For the big gates, I used an ink pen to etch a basic wood plank pattern then painted it dark brown.

Here you can see the extra detail I added to the short section of wall. The nearest staircase is the one that got partially melted.

A view from the back.

And from the top looking down. The dwarves are wondering why a Russian line infantry unit is parading past down below...

An aerial shot...

Frontal view with a better shot of the crumbling corner and some dwarves for scale. They seem pretty pleased with it. Not the different stone patterns -- all made with a quick stiple to give the illusion of stone without all the tedious detail work.

I'm very pleased with how this turned out, especially since my original design was such a disappointment. I've already started work on the rest of the dwarven fortification, which will be guarding a mine entrance, that goes with this.