Building a Ruined Tower for Dungeons & Dragons out of Styrofoam 

Hope you guys enjoyed this build. If you did consider supporting the channel on Patreon to help me bring more great content to the community: bit.ly/JoinTheBMC_Fellowship Or you can help fund future videos by purchasing your supplies through my "Essential Equipment" page: bit.ly/EssentialEquip

I like the gaps that you left in the tower walls. When you see real ruined walls, you see that the stones do start separating like this. It just seems to age the walls better.

when you were going on about the heat gun melting the bricks i couldnt help but think it might actually be fitting for a stone tower damaged by dragonfire or magical fire

"Cut my stir sticks into pieces , this is my castle forrrt!"

Excellent timing. I'm just breaking for Summer from the school D&D club I run and we are in Thundertree, just about to assault the green dragon, Venomfang. This will give me time to craft the scenery.

My favourite thing about living in europe is being able to walk to the nearest medieval castle and look at how they were constructed. This is a great source of inspiration for terrain building.

@4:44 "I created square cubes..." Square cubes?! Whoa! Slow down, there, Poindexter. What do I do with all of these round cubes, now? ;-)

Just finished this build tonight. Super fun build. I made mine with a bit larger circumference , added a curved staircase to an arrow slit and a removable wooden stand & ladder set. I suggest everyone get a proxxon hot wire table (if it's in your budget) from BMC's Amazon links. Costs you nothing and helps out the channel. Learned a lot from my fellow Canadian! Cheers!

I literally subscribed because this man cares, he doesn't put the Amazon prices/links on the list if they are too expensive and tells you to buy in store!

Great tower, super fun process to watch!

Using the heat gun has a real world analogue: in Scotland, there are prehistoric ruins known as 'Vitrified Forts'. The stone walls have been subjected to extreme heat, and have melted together in a hard, glassy mass.

Here's an idea: make the first floor round and intact, then add a "layer" on top with the ruined features. If you were so inclined, you could basically replicate the bottom layer as many times as needed to build up new layers, essentially making modular floors you could add or remove as you like or even make taller ruined towers!

Now that verticality has been introduced, guess that means we’ll be seeing modular and functional ladders?

Nice! I love that second floor. When I did my round tower I planned out a full tower floorplan and then cut it in half (top to bottom) so that when the two halves are together it looks like a full round tower, but when I pull it apart I get two halves and have two ruined towers.

I just want you to know that I discovered your channel today and I've been binge watching your videos because I'm sick and you are so cool. I love your creativity and I kinda want to work with my DM and create some pieces for our games

Might be worth mentioning that there are cardboard tubes that are intended as concrete forms that you can get from your local home improvement store. They seem to typically run from about an 8" (20cm) to 12" (30cm) diameter and about 4' (1.2m) long. Should make a very good base for a tower of an arbitrary height and you could simply texture the outside of the tower rather than building it up out of individual bricks. I suspect the result wouldn't be as nice as this one, but that you could build it much faster.

Love your ideas and techniques. I'm building European WWII dioramas in 1/35 scale for posing my German armour. I get so many ideas from watching your must see videos. Keep up the good work.

Good stuff, the arrow slits are a great touch, I'd love to play on this piece.

Awesome! Craftsmart Tan wins the MVP for craft paint.

This is another great inspiration build piece much like your Viking ship way back when. Marvelous look of stone and wood flooring!

My friend thank you for starting me on a journey to medieval building thank you for these videos.

Well, a "Northern Stone" ruined tower. Love it! How about some stuff for a desert campaign?

BMC, you are amazing, I have been looking around my local hardware stores for bluefoam and whatnot, and could never find anything apart from roof insulation, that I do want to use for a big gaming board, but not for normal terrain building. Thanks to your styrofoam guide, I have finally found a place where I can buy my styrofoam in the Netherlands, so thank you very much!

Awesome results - the tower looks fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

You deserve ALLOT more than 54k subs sir! My face was on the floor through all of this and now I am inspired to create my own terrain and features. Also your players are blessed to be able to have you creating and providing such beautiful creations for them to enjoy. I would absolutely love to see you streaming your games and showing off these items. Well done sir.

Frickin sweet, I love it. This kind of stuff is so damn inspiring! I love the butresses under the arrow slot. Thanks for the modpodge/paint tip too!

Second favourite build to your shipwreck cottage. Thanks for sharing

I love your work cause it's seem easy and the results are very pro. Thank for showing.

Very inspirational! Thanks for making modelling look approachable and achievable

That's a fantastic piece of work. It looks stunning. All the best...Tom

Another great build! So far I'm really impressed with the quality of your content and I've been able to apply some of the techniques in my own crafting! Keep it up man, this is my favorite channel on youtube

I don't even play D&D, but this video was very satisfying to watch, you sir have some nice skills in making stuff like this!

Great Tower! I love it! Please make a special how to make a graveyard with tombs and everything else! Thank you very much!

Very versatile piece! The circular walls definitely justify not going modular in this particular case.

Great work

Hey awesome vids! I just started building scenery and I learned a lot from your channel. Now I am building a tower like this one.

Bloody magnificent !!! Cheers for sharing.

This is my favorite project I have seen you do. The best part of 3D terrain is going vertical.

I’m thinking of using your method for dungeon tiles to make 3d tile replacements for the Descent tiles! You’ve been a great inspiration!

Yesss!!! Getting back to the builds!! Love it!!!

Just Wow! That came out fantastic!

That's a video of incredible quality. Keep up.

You are a God at crafting stuff. Amazing

So confused as to why anyone would thumbs down this video. You're very easy to follow and the results are great

Really nice piece and totally badass for a “boss” battle!

Love it. Thanks for the demo.

I've been making some ruins similar to your modular ruins and now you have making even more bricks so I can make my own tower! If mine come out half as good as yours I'll be happy indeed!

Fantastic build. Looks amazing!

Dear Holy Emperor, your work looks like a terrain in an actual video game like Dark Souls. So Beautiful!!!

You never disappoint with your videos. Excellent job man.

Just discovered your channel. Utterly blown away!

Have you thought about using a bit of plant matter terrain as well? The tower is definitely old and ruined and it would make sense for some ivy to grow and maybe a tree that's busted through the pave stones inside? This is a fantastic piece of terrain! A+

Amazing work brother 🤙🏾

Nice job, looks really good. Keep up the good work.

Excellent work mate 🇬🇧👍🏻🇺🇸👍🏻

Maravilhoso seu trabalho! Amei!

just found the channel. Going through all your stuff now and watching all your cool stuff~

Yeah was absolutely awesome sauce👍👍!!!!

That thing looks awesome. These new ruin pieces you've done plus this tower are must haves for me. I'll be busy one weekend making an entire collection.

Quite by accident, I discovered that I can texture my stones, after they're in place, with the tip of a hot glue gun. I just dab at them and it melts in a texture. I also round edges this way. This also gives the foam a hard skin. I have a horrible, uncontrollable glue gun that I bought from Hobby Lobby. I don't even put glue in it. I just use it for this technique. Michael

Wow! This came out very nice.

You are an incredible creator, thank you for your work.

Excellent video, I would add a few suggestions in the model railroad hobby we use plaster cloth to cover the foam. The only downside is you have redo the joint lines they could be done in pencil lead .. it would make it very secure with out the damage caused by the heat gun..

Just wanted to say that in a couple of weeks I will finally have a "staycation" and in preparing for that, I bought a proxxon hot wire cutter, Tomb of Foes, the graphic chip board and a cutting matt through your affiliate link. (I bought the hot wire foam factory scroll table just before you came out with the comparison video and never set it up thats to seeing how slow and tedious it was at cutting) I have slowly been acquiring plenty of supplies in the hopes of having time and the right tools for making it and now I'm finally be making a assembly line of tiles, and scatter for a solid 2 weeks... I'm gonna be cutting a boatload of terrain pieces at once (dungeon, tavern, ruins, cavern, sewer) tiles, and scatter terrain, doors, archways, cemetery pieces. For the Tiles I'm using your method of tiles with Wylock's cardboard lock system with one modification I'm making the system a sandwich of a 3x3 with 5 one inch "X" pattern and another 3x3 that way I can just make them all the same height. Since I am gonna try and make most of the regular modular stuff these two weeks and when I need "set" pieces for a "boss battle" I'l have plenty of time to sit down and design those. I'm figuring on having to make 400 individual tiles split between the sets. I was thinking I'll probably only need 25 Tavern and 75 sewer tiles and a 100 each of the other sets. I know it sounds a bit insane but I know that if I don't just flipping make this all at once and commit I'll never get things to match up properly ever. (I guess it's my OCD getting the better of me) but how many arches/ door ways/ scatter terrain pieces should I make for this huge undertaking? I'm thinking a day of cutting, a day of texturing, a day of mod podge, and a couple days of painting... So knowing what you and others consider of having enough each type of scatter would be helpful.

I watched this video in 2018 and decided to build though I had no experience with xps but my dad had some xps lying around so I made huge bricks that looked very crappy only a year later of practice and a 23 dollar hand held hot wire my foam core houses and dungeon and town scatter look a lot better because I watched your vids with your tips they look great thank you black magic craft

Some lichen growing on the bricks would look cool as well.

Outstanding detail mate

With ruins it can sometimes be fun to make the corresponding bit of the ruin which can then slot into the bottom section to form an intact (but damaged) building. The upper bit can then also be flipped "upside down" to be used as a second ruin. Takes a bit more planning and obviously kind of pointless if you just want one of that type of ruin but may be something to think of next time you want to make multiple ruins of a similar building.

That was really fun to watch; nice work. Subbed. Thanks.

Great build mate really enjoyed the video as well😬

Another great build. Really knocked it out the park on this one brilliant work man

..You also makes me buy the Proxxon foam cutter!!! (I use the link ;) I didn't try it yet but already loving it! lol

“Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.”

looks great!

I really like the arrow slits.

"I don't want to make modular round walls. It's kind of a pain in the ass." Said every model builder EVER!

Awesome as always.

You know the old days, 80's Castle Grayskull? That would be way more awesome !!! I have an old Castle Grayskull, black eyes black mouth, done. That was everything.

I follow you from France and I 'd like to say you rocks !!

Very cool!

I dont play D&D but I love building this kind of stuff! great tutorial boss!

AMAZING WORK!

for hot glue wisps, try a hair dryer, its a to lower temp than a heat gun. on my craft projects I find that using the lowest setting on a hair dryer does the trick

That’s a really fun build.

Looks awesome

Great work man!!

Awesome build bro. I think the opposite stability bricks and other gaps actually add a lot to the ruined/crumbled, not-quite-perfect-after-400-years look. Before watching I just saw the piece and thought, damn, dude NAILED that sagging, imperfect ruins look.

Hi I just made first build. you have taught me everything I know about making scenery. thanks a lot. when I get my shit together I'll for sure become a patreon supporter. thank you very much.

excellent work my man !

I totally agree that ruins should be modular, a tower doesn't have to.

Very Nice job

These build videos are amazing. Have you ever thought about posting videos of using them in play? It would be great to see these amazing features in action

Great idea ... Building this as a quarentine project... I hate to ask but have you heard how Wyloch is doing you guys and DM Scotty have been the trinity of my journey, thank you , be safe , be well

Look into model train diorama/scene stuff. Scale lumber, etc.

Nice work

Really awesome man

Looks fun, like playing with blocks

Very cool 1 hell of a job

Absolutely gorgeous. I think I definitely want to try my hand at one as well (one of these days). Maybe add some moss, lichen, and/or ivy... Or a ruined tapestry or pennant. Fun!!

Your so good at this