Making my Bell Tower for Frostgrave

The Frostgrave 2nd Edition rule book includes a scenario called 'The Summoning Bell', in which there is a bell tower in the centre of the table and the bell is constantly ringing, attracting all manner of creatures. Therefore, aside from claiming treasure, the objective is to climb the tower to silence the bell and reduce the tide of monsters. I've played this scenario several times, but we've never had a proper bell tower model, and have always had to improvise, which isn't very satisfactory - so I've been wanting to build a tower for quite a while. What I came up with is a sort of 'hybrid' between scratch building and use of pre-made components. I knew I wanted to use the stone steps from Fenris Games again, as they were so effective in my Frostgrave diorama from a few years ago:

Wizards' duel in the frozen ruins in a diorama I made as a prize in a charity quiz to raise money for Alzheimer's Society

And I wanted to use some of the stone hands and faces from Bad Squiddo Games to add a creepy quality to the tower. I'd used some of the hands previously in a wizard's tower:

Wizard's tower which I made for Dead Earth Games in 2022

I also thought of using wooden stairs for the ground level, as I'd bought a few sets from Blotz when I was at Reveille last year.

I wanted a cool looking bell without resorting to a generic 3d print, so I spent a bit of time looking in charity shops and second hand stores before I found one I wanted on Etsy; a metal bell with a dragon design:

Whereas a lot of the time I will plan a build with drawings and mock-ups, this time I really made it up as I went along, just building a couple of boxes from foam card to match the heights of the wooden and stone stairs - the main idea I had was to have the steps snaking up the outer walls of the tower.

I've used PVA to glue the corners of this foam card structure, with dress pins to hold it in place while the glue dries

I've used a pre-cut MDF scenery base from Warbases, and dry-fitted the base of the tower and the MDF stairs to double-check the heights match

Here I've stacked the stairs in the configuration I want, again dry-fitted, just trying ideas out before committing

Still a dry-fit, this time with a second foam card box constructed to for the upper tower

Once I was happy with the general shape of the tower, I glued everything in place apart from the wooden stairs, and allowed it to dry overnight. The next step was to render the walls with air dry clay, with a stonework pattern created with texture rollers. I could then add the hands and statue head to the walls by drilling and pinning them securely in place with wire, and add some ruined walls (Fenris Games) for extra detail. I needed a solution for mounting the bell in the tower, and had the idea of it being held by a stone fist.

As well as using air dry clay to make the stone walls, I've also used it to fill some of the larger gaps. Once the walls were clad, i could glue the wooden stairs in place.

I left the building to dry overnight, and then I could take it outside and spray the whole model with black primer, after which I airbrushed it dark grey as a base coat.

I picked out a few of the individual stones with terracotta and brown paint, and then dry-brushed the whole model with increasingly lighter shades of grey up to almost white, using a large flat brush for the bulk of this, and switching to light passes with a round makeup brush-style dry brush for the last stages. I then sponged on Dirty Down Moss on random patches of the stonework.

The wooden stairs were dry-brushed with increasingly lighter browns, with light grey to give it an aged look, and the bell was base-coated with bronze, then weathered with Dirty Down Verdigris. I then covered the base with Vallejo dark mud ground texture and let that dry overnight. The finals stages were adding winter grass tufts and dried leaves (from birch seed pods) and then applying snow effects to the whole piece. I use Woodland Scenics soft snow flock mixed into clear gloss varnish, which gives a very effective result and is also very cost effective (I've added snow to a whole set of Frostgrave scenery and figures, and still have about four fifths of a container of snow flock left). You can keep the mixture in a sealed jar and it has a long shelf life - if it does start to dry out it can just be reactivated with a bit more varnish.

I'm looking forward to using the bell tower in a game soon!