Massive Bridge

I'm a huge fan of Mordheim, a table-top wargame from Games Workshop. To bring you up to speed, Mordheim is a fantasy game set in a ruined city. Each player uses a group of small miniatures representing warriors called a warband to play a turn-based strategy game and defeat their opponent's warband. To be honest, however, my favorite part of the game is modeling the scenery.

So, here is the first post of my scenery creation blog. Lately I had a little spare time on my hands and I thought I would design a pretty ambitious project and spend that time bringing it to life. I thought up in my head a complicated bridge with two spans and a two-tier landing system on either side.

Firstly, here are the tools and materials I used:

Foam Board -

This stuff is awesome. It is 3/16" thick and very light and durable. This is the main building material for the bridge.

#11 X-Acto knife and blades -

It is very important that you use #11 blades. The #1 blades are not sharp enough to cut the foam board and will ruin the edges. You should also expect to go through a few blades (I used three for the bridge).

Felt-tip Marker -

I just use these to mark on the foam board. I use a red one, but any color can be used. Just use something that is easy to see (not yellow).

Square / Straight Edge -

Super important. You'll need to make sure you've got perfect 90° angles. My squares were my great-grandfather's from 1903, and they're not quite square. So make sure you've got a good one.

Elmer's White Glue -

Also very important. Obviously, this stuff holds everything together.

OK. Time for the bridge. The most important thing for me is the plan:


Alright, that's not a very good picture of the plan, but you can kind of see it. If you want a copy, email me and I'll send you a high-res scan or post it later or something. The plan is pretty much the whole crux of the entire project. I put my idea down on the paper (you can see it there on the top half as a top-down architectural plan) and then from that drawing I drew out each and every piece necessary with their proper dimensions. I suggest some high quality graph paper for this.

Just to put things in a little scope, most building projects I do for scenery have between 5 and 10 pieces and take between 45 minutes and an hour to do. This project had 190 pieces and took almost 6 hours.

Anyway, the next step is getting all of the pieces drawn onto the foam board with the marker. Um, I didn't take any pictures of this step sorry. But the gist of it is that you use the square and measure out the pieces you need and draw the lines as accurately as possible. With this project, because I had so many pieces, I really had to cram them on the boards, and actually used 3 entire 30" x 20" boards for the pieces.

After they are all drawn, really carefully cut them out. Use a good sturdy x-acto knife and prepare for your hand to be a little sore afterwards. Also, don't be afraid to change out the blade with a new, sharp one if it feels like it's beginning to drag through the foam. My strategy for cutting the board was to do each cut in two strokes. The first is to break the top layer of paper and cut most of the foam, and the second is to cut the bottom layer of paper and finish the cut. There are two important things to remember when cutting: make vertical cuts and finish the bottom. Making vertical cuts is very important. The edge needs to be as close to square with the plane of the board so that when it is glued to another board it will be square with it. Second, when cutting you will often not quite complete the bottom cut, and may need to flip the board over to finish the cuts and make sure they connect. (If it isn't easy to pop the piece out after cutting, don't force it and check the bottom cuts!)

So after you've got all the pieces cut out, you should have something like this:


Oh, be really freakin' sure to label your pieces.

Ok, assembly. As you see in the previous picture, I started to assemble the first set of stairs. Here is the stairs after they are assembled:

... and my sock.

Some tips for assembly:

• Glue carefully, after it dries, it will rip the paper and ruin the pieces if you try to disassemble them.
• Use a small amount of glue. Just like in elementary school, you only need to use a very thin, light strip of glue on the foam edge of a piece to stick it to another piece. It will hold better and dry faster.
• If you have to wait, wait. Sometimes it is easier to glue together pieces that are already dry. So just wait, make a sandwich or something.

The rest of the process was pretty simple. After the steps I made the second-tier platforms:


Then I assembled the stair pieces with the first-tier platorms:




Just a note on cutting surfaces. You can see here that I'm working on my bedroom floor which has a really durable Berber carpet. I can drag my knife through it all day and not hurt the knife or the carpet. You need to be very careful what you are cutting on. Some craft stores sell cutting mats that might work.

Next step was attaching the main bridge to the platforms and finishing the other side:





Then, after that dried, I attached them together, finished up a few interior walls and added all of the pillars. Here is the final bridge with some detail shots:





I do intend to detail, texture and paint this model, I just haven't yet.

Well, there you have it, the bridge in all its glory. I really enjoyed working on this and I hope it inspires some of you to do the same. Please comment with your opinion or if you have questions or suggestions. Good luck!