Here is my 4 story Dust building. I still have to add some more touches and paint to the sidewalk base/mat (it's kind of like a mat as it is seperate and just has grooves in the design so that the building just drops into place on top of it… it makes it easier to transport if the building isn't attached to the base and that way I can even take the building apart if I want to. Obviously the roof comes off the building as well to get at models on the floors inside. These pics show Infinity models on it as my Dust models are at my brother's right now and this building will be used quite a bit in Infinity games as well and I took pics for the Infintiy site as well, but the building is what I'm concentrating on here. Any tips on how to make the sidewalk base better (other then to obviously add some more paint and weathering) or what kind of little touches I should add… I'm not cutting up the building into ruins though.

Looks fantastic! What material did you use for the roof? I'm want to do something similar and trying to figure out what material to use.

Thanks,

T.

I cut a few pieces to the size and shape need out of the foam sheets as I will be doing more of these buildings once this one is done.

Its just a craft foam sheet cut to size that I got from the dollar store for 50 cents each. I have seen them in packages at Walmart too in the craft section but the dollar store was cheaper. Its what I used to make the base that the building sits on as well. I just cut up it all up and glued it down to stiff cardboard. The pieces left over from cutting the shape for the roof became the basis for what I glued down to the base that you see here. The rest is just strips of it to go around the shape of the buiding and squares glued down over top of them to give me the basis for a stone sidewalk type of thing. It still needs work but I'll get there. The foam sheets are about the size of a piece of paper though they are obviously thicker than a sheet of paper, lol. You find it in craft sections, usually in multiple colours for kids to cut up and do crafts with so I bought grey ones and went from there. I still need to finish off the base quite a bit before its done but with the building shaped groove I made in the base, the building just drops in and stays in place perfectly.

Have you actually tried to move figures on the ground floor yet? It's bad enough with 3 stories let alone 4. Good luck

Major Mishap said:

That's easy… as you see from the pics of the base that the building drops into place and the grooves make sure it always goes down in the same exact place every single time. The should also be able to see in the pic of the base that the ground floor section is there in the exact shape of the building. So since the grooves keeps the building in the same spot every time, when you need to move guys on the ground floor you simply pull off the building move the guys around on the base itself (which is the ground floor and then put the building back down when you are done moving the guys. Just look at the picture of the base in the post right above yours and it should become clear. When I finish off the base I may put discreet markings to show on the ground floor layout exactly where all the window frames end, etc, but so far that has not been necessarry to be honest as the sidewalk pieces let me know where the windows are when I pull the building off the base. Its actually tougher accessing the guys on the second floor than it is getting at the guys on the ground floor… the ground floor is the easiest of them all.

So the solution is that I will sand down the pegs connecting the floors together so that they are not held in tight but instead just sit in place on top of each other with the pegs holding them on but allowing them to be removed as an entire floor easily. That way I can do higher than 4 stories and have some high-rise buildings with every floor able to detach from each other to access the models inside. This is more for other games than it is for Dust, Dust doesn't really need buildings that tall with interior rooms but other games I play could benefit from them.

I will also be making a fire escape system up the side of the building to allow access from the ground to the roof as well as a small structure on the roof with a door for access to the roof from the inside of the building… then I just need to finish off the base and then I can start on the next stage… which is to have every floor permanently glued together so that they are solid and stiff… then I will sand down the pegs for each floor so that every floor can be dropped down and taken off with ease. At that point I can replace the cheesy cardboard floor pieces that only go where the windows are with full floor sections with stairs that lead from floor to floor with each floor having a hole where the stairs go up. Then I can have interior walls/rooms and stairs that lead up from floor to floor with each level able to be removed as needed…. then the building will truly be complete…. It will be a WIP for some time but when its done it will be a fully functional building inside and out with as many opportunities for intense battles taking place inside the building as what is happening outside… in many ways, it will be more intense inside the buildings with models moving from room to room as well as floor to floor. It will take some time but it will be a pretty freakin' sweet building when its done.

I did something similar and filed down the retaining pegs slightly so that the entire floor section can be lifted off without effort. When reseated the pegs still hold it in place to the buildings structure. This allowed the building to be assembled the with integral floors in the sections. All in alI it works pretty good. You loose some variety as the building is static though… which dosnt bother me as I will just go buy another kit or 2 if I want a different building. I will try and get some pics up later in the week.

Have you managed more than 2 different setups. I have only been able to do this main basic building setup and the big square setup that they show in one of the tactics camapign booklets (it might have been in the cerberus booklet, I can't remember anymore. I have tried screwing around with it a bit and I'm sure if I had another floor worth of pieces that I could make a larger version of the basic design but how many different layouts have you managed to come up with?

Here's a few ideas I had, using only one "Warzone Tenement"

http://www.front-toward-enemy.us/2012/07/dtw-warzone-tenement-review.html

Awesome stuff… I never thought of doing that kind of stuff. I feel totally stupid now as I have only been thinking, "how do I use all the pieces to make one different looking building" instead of "how many different buildings can I make out of one building?" Awesome stuff, thanks man. I'm gonna get a couple tennement boxes and have all kinds of buildings made now!

Thanks and your welcome.

I just got Zverograd, so now I have more parts to mess around with this weekend, if I get time of course.

So I decided to cut the single building into 2 buildings for now and add to their height later. Just pretend that there are Dust minis posed in the buildings as I had already taken these pics for another system for a different forum and saw no need to re take pics with Dust minis as the buildings are the focus anyway.

To get at the second floor you simply take the roof off. You can see the stairs coming up through the floor from the first floor (obviously this is all still a WIP).

T

To get at the ground floor you just pull the entire building off the base and set it aside and deal with the ground floor action.

There is still quite a bit of work left to do but they are actually functional right now and seem to be coming along at least somewhat close to my vision (or at least I can see the day when they will look close to what I envisioned).

Excellent work! Did you reinforce the foam sheets at all?

Definitely, I had to because the foam sheets are way to flimsy on their own for the weight of a bunch of minis. But that is easy and you can use anything stiff like cardboard, etc. Just cut it out in the shape once you have the proper floor shape finalized. For one of them I used cardboard, for the other one though I just used the original floor inserts. I glued them into the floor slots that they go into and then put some glue down on them and glued the foam sheet down to them. The stiffness of the original inserts is soo strong that as long as they are glued down nice and taught, they don't sag in the midlle where there is no insert. This is what I did for the roof sections of both buildings and they hold up well and the inserts are obviously not glued in to the building for the roof section. They just sit on the inside of the frame and just by being glued on to the foam add stiffness and stability to the entire foam sheet.. I have had a TAG on both roofs to test them with no noticeable sagging. A TAG is like the size of a light walker except made of metal and has considerable weight. All the models you see in the pics are all metal. The sniper model on the roof of the one building has some serious weight all by itself and sits on the roof or on the second floor no problem. In the one pic it looks like the roof is sagging in from the weight but its actually not, thats just a bend in the foam sheet from where I had to trim the card insert underneath to fit the roof better. I have since bent it back into shape.

The foam by itself wouldn't be strong enough to hold up heavier models… It could handle one or two of the plastic dust models maybe but not metals. But with reinforcement underneath, they work great amd they are easy to cut and they are cheap and the models don't slide around on the foam material which is the main reason I chose to use the foam sheets.

Great job, man!

We played w/ one "still in the naked plastic" the other day and it was fun, but this one would have been freakin' awesome to play w/. Nice work.

Looks good, Strombole! Are those the Terraclips staircases?

Good eye… yes they are the stairs from "streets of malifaux" (and no I do not play Malifaux not that there's anything wrong with that, lol)

Can anyone tell me the dimensions of this when built in the regular config? How many inches wide x long x high?

Trying to get an idea of how many I'd need to fill a standard 4 x 4 table -

Thanks!