Part 1 – First Impressions and building the Kit
Every table needs some great terrain to fight over - a game played on a table full of interesting terrain peices is always more enjoyable (to me!) than one with minimal or uninspired terrain.
Some time ago, I received my Egyptian Temple Kit (and Pylon Temple Kit – but that’s another story!!) in the mail from CastleKits.com. I had intended to build the things right away but life intervened and I wasn’t able to get to work on them until 3 or 4 months after they arrived! Bah commitments!
When I first learned of Castlekits I was pretty sure I’d want something from them eventually. I’ve always wanted to try to build something with Hirst Arts stuff but visions of all the casting and mess really put me off. Enter Castlekits with the solution! Iain at Castlekits does the messy bit for you! He casts up all the required parts, packs them up, prints out instructions for you, and provides some hints and tips to boot! All of this comes at a pretty minimal cost (the Temple entrance is only about $16 US – and just wait ‘til you see what the end product looks like!).
When I first opened the box I was very impressed with the packaging. Iain uses a tough form of plaster called Hydrostone but still, it’s plaster and I admit I was a bit worried about breakage. I needn’t have been. Everything was very carefully packed and there was only one piece in the whole box (well over 500 pieces I believe) that suffered any damage – and I may have caused that myself when unpacking it. Groups of components (perhaps the output of one mold?) were placed on card backing, wrapped in bubble wrap, and then securely taped to eliminate movement during shipping.
Now, right along with being impressed with the packing I have to admit that I was a little bit daunted by all those little pieces! There were hundreds of them and I was going to have to put them all together myself! Luckily, Castlekits includes some pretty impressive construction directions (courtesy of Hirst Arts). The instructions did a lot to ease my mind and reading through Iain’s hints and tips helped too! Newly heartened I gathered the supplies I would need and got ready to build! In the next picture you can see some of the goods: a tape measure, glue, my box-o’-parts, some legos (for making square corners and straight lines – lucky for me the kiddos have hordes of blocks!), my instructions, a big piece of plexi-glass for the base and some chocolate (this last bit is essential! - one must have fuel!).
The individual pieces have very good detail. They all have a convincing sandstone texture and many have hieroglyphs – I have no clue what they might say, but they sure look cool! I noticed very few “bubbles” on the parts – sometimes plaster parts are riddled with these annoying flaws – not so here.
I started with the pillars. One thing the instructions don’t really tell you is that the pillars are in 4 pieces each – you must build the top half and bottom half and them assemble the two halves into one pillar. The instructions simply say to glue the top half to the bottom half; it really is pretty self explanatory but still…for the sake of completeness… (Important to note that this is the only problem I noticed with the instructions and it is pretty minor). The next photo shows the pillar halves assembled – I set them aside at this point to allow the glue to dry before putting the halves together).
With the pillar halves drying I moved on to the sphinxes and their plinths. Seven parts make up each statue (see picture) and the instructions show very clearly how they go together. Some quick gluing and I had all four done. At this point I noticed that I was going to have some extra sphinx and other parts – yay for extras! I also decided at this point that the construction was going much more quickly and smoothly than I had expected! Yay for easy!!
Next came the obelisks – these were a bit tricky – mainly because I started by winging it without looking at the directions. A quick glance showed me the error of my ways and once I realized my mistake I was putting these things together like clockwork – again: easy! After some initial concern I was very impressed with how well the obelisks went together. Each one is made of 8 pieces (not counting the base). These pieces fit together flawlessly. For real – flawlessly – no trimming, no sanding, nothing: cake! The next couple of photos show the interior nubbins that help you line things up properly – I had my flash too high so these are washed out – sorry bout that, though I did lower the flash level at some point!).
Obelisk bases were next. These are made of thirteen individual parts (the little pyramids on top are made of 4 pieces). Again, the instructions show very clearly exactly how they are to be constructed. At this point I first used my legos (well duplo blocks actually). In this case I built a corner with legos and used this to ensure my bases stayed square – I should’ve gotten a picture of it but sometimes ya just can’t have it all!
I had a picture that showed the correct alignment of the 4 pieces of the pointy obelisk tip but they were so washed out that you couldn’t see anything. You’ll have to trust me that I really did build ‘em! Also, at this point, I finally turned down the flash on my camera! The next photo shows the bits of the obelisks assembled and drying. You can also see what might look like some damage – these nicks were actually intentional! I wanted my final terrain piece to look old so throughout the process I was doing some minor damage. I allowed the bits to dry for about 20 minutes before I assembled them into complete obelisks.
I forgot to get pictures of gluing the pillar halves and obelisk parts together, but it was very clear-cut; stack, check, glue. Again, there was no cutting, sanding, scraping, cursing, or bitterness involved!
The next photo shows my pieces all assembled and arranged in essentially the right places on the plexiglass base. I’ve put two of the extra sphinx on too…this isn’t actually where thy ended up, but you’ll have to wait for Part II for that! Also, astute readers will note that I never opened my chocolate bar! So much for the essential fuel…
That concludes part one of my Temple Entrance tutorial – in the next installment I take you through painting and finishing what ends up being a terrific terrain piece.