WWX Watcher Hive, The Final Board

In this post I talk about the final construction of the Watcher Hive board I made for Warcradle Studio's Wild West Exodus miniatures game, and I show off the completed table...

With all of the lighting complete, the final pieces to build were the walkways and the large portals. The walkways were made from foam core board, framed with styrene U-strips and flat strips. Styrene L-strups were used as brackets to secure the walkways to the floor and wall. Styrene ladders turned sideways were used as the railings.

 

The tower was painted to match the rest of the table, with a blue glow at the top. The ladders for the railings were carefully bent to follow the curve of the platform.

 

The large portal started as a foam-core board cutout...

 

Over top of this I added some structural supports with styrene card, and then used Aves Apoxie® Sculpt, to build up a relief.

 

The center was wired with flickering LEDs and reflective strips, and the opening covered with clear, textured plastic to create the illusion of a shimmering portal of light.

 

Two portals were made– One complete, and the other with its top blasted off. Each of them were mounted on a pile of foam rocks to match the exposed stone in the hive interior.

 

A few other separate pieces were made to accompany the board– a crane and a damaged portal. The crane was made using thick styrene rod as an armature, over which I sculpted the organic components with more Aves Apoxie Sculpt.

 

The damaged portal was made from foam core board and plastic card with styrene L-strips and U-strips for the edging.

I'll close out with some gallery photos of the Watcher Hive's exterior and interior:

 

Woe betide those who trespass in the lair of the Watchers. Few have entered, and fewer still have returned.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing some of the process that brought this epic board together.

'Til next time!