"Has Anyone Ever Scratch-Built A 15mm CATACOMB?" Topic

Either as a trophy maze for Predator(y) Aliens or for your own VSF, Pulp, Fantasy or Horror adventurers?

Let's get down to the bones of the matter . . .

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If so, how did you line up the walls with "scale-appropriate" bones (15mm, HO)? Or did you just go economy style with the occasional bone imbedded here and there into the walls?

Did you have to carve/sculpt them out yourself, or did you buy from a source and converted them to wall decor? If the latter, then who is the seller?

Or did you use some sort of template?

Either way, do you have any helpful tips?

Thanks,

Dan

Haven't done it, but I have a plan drawn out (the plan includes starting on it by July). For the body parts, I intend to lay out about a half dozen skeletons from minis (28mm in my case) and then take molds in thermal plastic. Then I will replicate the corpses in clay and lay them in alcoves (carved foam).

It won't have near the number of bones in the cinematic pix you have above, but it will look more like the Early Medieval catacombs in Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Austria that I have been in – dug out mazes of tunnels full of alcoves stuffed with corpses.

I have a dozen layouts of 1.5" wide passages (with 1.5" thick walls; .5 inch thick alcoves on each side) that will fit on 6"x6" boards, as I intend to make it a modular set.

Hope that helps.

Ooo, I would love to see those plans!

How big are the tiles going to be? And what are they made of?

Dan

OK. Here are the piece layouts. Each board will be thin card 6"x6". The walls will be foam, cut into 1.5" x 2" tall strips, then cut to size for the pieces I need. I intend to carve out alcoves with a soldering iron, the add the corpses, assemble, and use the corpse templates for some clutter.

I will at least make 36 of them (for a 3'x3' board), but probably a few more as well. I haven't decided whehter or not to increase the number of designs.

I will also likely replace some of the 1-blocks with monuments.

Etotheipi,

That is fantastic!!!

Now, when you say 36 tiles, do you mean 3 sets of the above, or do you plan to make more of some than others? And are you going to fill up the entire board with tiles?

My board is going to be 2' by 4', and I have 6" harboard tiles I bought a while back, after a really good suggestion from Paintbeast:

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TMP link

And this is what I ordered these from that site:

48 of their 6" x 6" tiles
12 or their 9" x 12" tiles (in case I wanted larger room combo options, or to make long corridors?)

And photos of incredible work like this here were the initial inspiration:

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The main reasons for my long delay have been 1) not knowing what configurations would give my 48 tiles the greatest potential; and 2) not being sure if I should go with a more generic (minimum decoration) tunnel system, for multiple uses, or go for a more dedicated "catacomb" complex.

Thanks,

Dan

I'll probabaly just repeat the dozen designs I have there. It will make it easier to cut the main pieces if I count the sizes I need and multiply by three. With just four of the twelve tiles, there are a couple of million combinations possible, so variety really won't be much of a problem.

To decorate the set you have you might want to consider leaving most corridors empty, placing a different small piles of scattered bones in six or so and going all out for the dead end alcoves (how many of them are there?).

Then the dead ends could be burial chambers, lairs, or pantries.

With six (or some small number) of light loaded ones, you could use them to indicate special conditions.