Building My First Dice Tower

Many of you that follow me on Instagram (view my feed here) know that for the past year I painted a lot of minis and built some terrain. These small projects not only made the table look great on gaming nights, but also let me dabble in new techniques and get comfortable with some of the tools of the trade. Well this upcoming year, I want to push myself to the next level. It’s always important to keep moving forward out of your comfort zone.

With someone’s birthday coming, I decided to challenge myself to build my first Dice Tower. She loves playing table top roleplaying games, and has a love for Asian culture. So, I worked out a rough idea of a pagoda as the tower and a small courtyard where the dice could fall into. I researched Chinese pagoda architecture (and found out they’re always built with an odd amount of floors), and watched a wide variety of people building towers on Youtube to get the gist of the concept. I then made a ROUGH sketch of how I wanted to proceed, but I kept in mind that the design would shift throughout the process. 

Thinking back on all the issues I had to solve, the applications of previously learned techniques, and all the new ones I learned along the way, the whole process was quite satisfying.

THE PROCESS

 I’d rather the article lean on the side of inspiration to try something new than step-by-step instructions. That being said, I’ll go over some new techniques I tried, and what I learned. For starters, I was able to apply of what I learned during the terrain building and mini painting process. 

I found some sturdy cardboard to act as a frame for the tower. I then overlayed some 2mm foam. The whole concept of a Dice Tower is that the dice tumbles along multiple platforms on its way down to its landing spot, and I used angled pieces of 5mm foam for that. I’ll also say that I dropped various dice down through it every step of the way for quality control. And that helped A LOT. I adjusted angles of the platform, and narrowed the sides on the last platform to ensure the dice would go through the door every time. Before I did that, it would sometimes get stuck in a corner.

With the interior done, I added layers and textures onto the exterior. For wood, I ran a wire brush through some 2mm foam that I cut into strips. I also alternated between the airbrush and using a large brush by hand in a stippling motion to build colors and texture on the surface of the tower itself.

And now for the major pain point of the project - the roof pieces! It took some math, and then trial and error to get the right shape and pitch. Once I had that down, I began the painstaking process of cutting strips of shingles out of empty food packaging, gluing them all down into panels, painting them in multiple passes to get a slight color variation, and then gluing the panels onto the tower. It was all tedious, but made the most of it by listening to an audiobook while I worked.

And then it was time for the base. I had a spare slab of 1” foam you can find at Home Depot or most other hardware stores. I shaped some pieces with a cheap hot wire foam cutter and a crafting blade, and then layered them on top of each other to build a small hill for the tower to sit on. I made some rough steps to make it look like they were carved out of the hill itself, and then carved a cobblestone pattern into the courtyard. 

I played with various ideas on how I wanted to stop the motion of the dice. I also had to deal with the problem of the whole piece being too light. I ended up killing two birds with one stone - or technically multiple stones. I collected rocks from my garden that I thought would look like cool boulders. I placed them around the courtyard to create a barrier, and add some weight to the build. Along with a front gate I built with foam and made sturdy with toothpicks, the basic design of the base came together.

The seams in the glued foam layers kept bugging me, so I used common sparkling to cover them up, and then add rock-like texture in various spots. From there, I layered various watered-down browns, greens, blacks and grey paints along the piece to make it look natural. Along the flatter surfaces, I glued down tufts of grass you can get at your local crafting or hobby store. I was able to find these statues on Amazon that were the PERFECT size and added a lot to the overall story. And with those finishing touches, the base was complete!

For the final steps, I added one more real stone inside the tower before I glued it onto the base. That solved my last worry about distributing the weight evenly. When all the glue was set, I sprayed the whole project down with three coats of clear matte varnish for protection.

CONCLUSION

It came out far better than I could have hoped for! Thinking back on all the issues I had to solve, the applications of previously learned techniques, and all the new ones I learned along the way, the whole process was quite satisfying. By the way, she loved the Tower when I gave it as a gift. And it just so happens that one of her first rolls was a Natural 20!

I’m constantly amazed at the projects other people build, and I know it takes a huge mental effort to try it yourself. But that’s exactly what I’m encouraging you all to do. Now that I pushed myself past that comfort zone, I’m excited for the next upcoming builds I’m going to try, and I can’t wait to share them with you!