Mordheim

(continued…)

This is my second building that I am creating for my Mordheim Board and this is my second post. I’m calling it my Mordheim Church. It isn’t going to have a (playable) ground floor. Instead, the second floor has collapsed down upon it in most places. Here are a series of images as I go through the process of creating a destroyed wood-panel floor. You can click on an image to enlarge.

The idea is that a piece of the meteor crashed through this building, and destroyed the back wall. This also caused the second story floor to collapse down onto the first floor to create a sort of ramp. This will create an easy way to get up into this building from one side only.

Now to begin construction!

The first part of creating the floor was easy. I first cut the rounded ends off of 50 Popsicle sticks to use as Mordheim-sized floor boards. Then I cut seven of them into 1/3 and 2/3 sections. I glued the floor boards into place in a staggering manner:

Full length, 1/3, 2/3 and then back to a full length board again. This is a pretty normal construction method for normal houses. It makes the floors look nice and space the “seams” out so they aren’t so noticeable.

I will also mention that before I put any board down, I ran my sharp knife over the edges of it to give it a beat-up look. That’s a trick I learned from a Terra Genesis article on preparing wooden beams for Mordheim. They used balsa wood, as it’s a lighter wood and easier to cut/work with. I use Popsicle sticks cause it’s 1/20th the price. =]

I added some crossbeams from a stick to a firework that a friend had left at my house (after launching the firework of course=]). I added three crossbeams. One is still intact at both ends, one is broken only on the left side, and the last has completely collapsed.

No Base! I had discussed whether to use a base or not for my Mordheim buildings. Probably the biggest reason to use a base is to make it easier to build the building (and add rubble to it) without it falling apart. I took this as a challenge to build this building without a base! All of the destroyed Mordheim floor boards are glued together to create a firm, invisible base that holds it all together. So even though it looks like all those boards are about to fall to pieces, they are actually quite sturdy.

Now that I have finished this part, I have a little more wood framing to do for the windows and roof, and then I’ll be doing some final touches to make it look realistic.

More on it’s way!
Ashton Sanders

My wife bought be an electric heater as an early Christmas present, and the greatest thing about it is some sweet Styrofoam that came with it! I sliced off a section of it with my foam cutter, and you can see what I started with on the right.

I instantly decided that this was going to be a three-sided, two-story building. I also am going to use that thick block of Styrofoam to my advantage. I’m going to make the second story caved in on the first story to such a degree that you can’t actually access the first story. I can build a closed door on the front, some closed-shutter windows along the side.

After I had my foundation, I had to create my second story. I learned from my mistakes of creating my buildings too large for the Mordheim scale, so I brought it down on this one. The only real draw back with using this Styrofoam, is the walls are almost 4 feet wide (per Mordheim standards).

To create the top floor of this building, which I have decided is going to be a church, I took two “L”-shaped pieces of Styrofoam and cut them to fit perfectly on top of the Foundation. I used my foam cutter to cut the roof line onto this Mordheim Building. I also cut that large circle into the front wall to be the remnants of a stained-glass window.

I then measured some spots for small windows. Since these windows were so small and narrow, I couldn’t use my foam cutter or the same knife that I destroyed the first time I cut Styrofoam. So instead, I used a retractable razor blade. I heated the blade in a fire, and then stuck it into the foam to “melt” my windows into place.

I then started working on covering up the cracks that were created by having the two different sections of Styrofoam connecting. I used wood framing to do this. I also decided to add wooden baseboards around the entire ground level as well. Of course my favorite material for wood framing in Mordheim is Popsicle sticks.

I created the door frame for the front of the church. I will probably end up painting the door onto a piece of card stock, and then gluing it into place. This will set the door back behind the door frames.

I don’t look forward to framing all of the windows, but I will probably figure out some measurements that work, and just cutting all the pieces to size.

In this picture, I cut some pieces of thick card (from a Bed, Bath and Beyond Gift Box), and set it where it will probably go. These pieces of card will be glued into place and will be what holds up the roof leftovers. I will do my best to completely cover it with roof tiles, which probably will also be cut from the same card.

I did this whole project in about an hour, and I’m very excited to continue working on it.

-Ashton Sanders