Tag Archives: BSC2025

Terrain

Build Something Competition 2025 – Corey’s Distillery planning

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It’s Build Something Competition on the Lead Adventure Forums again and once again I’m running them, so have been a bit behind on my own entry (unlike Brian, who is racing ahead with construction).

This year’s theme is Vessel or Conveyance, so most are doing movable things like shuttles. Although we have law firms, we do have two alcohol-related entries – my distillery and Tarnegol’s brewed. May the best booze win!

Inspiration and initial thoughts

to start, I did a bunch of Googling to find good images. There’s actually a whole 3D printable stl for a distillery by MiniatureLand on MyMiniFactory, so that was a good place to look for inspiration:

Distilling itself is a product of alchemy, which are basically the same art with different outcomes. And historically, people did a lot of a alchemy, but strangely really only started distilling drinkable alcohol in large quantities in the early Renaissance, right as European alchemists started building on what the Arabic scholars had done. That does mean we get lots of great art about alchemy:

Il laboratorio dell’alchimista by Giovanni Stradano
The Alchemist by David Teniers the Younger
The Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers, by Joseph Wright of Derby

And of distilling itself, it really flourished in Renaissance Italy, which happens to be what I’m based on fantasy city on, so happy times. There are lots pieces of art of the key part of distilling: the still (the vessel from the competition theme):

Planning the building

With all those inspiration pieces done, I start the process of figuring out how big I wanted to make the building. I really want to tie it into my planned sewer/basements I’m doing for my city, so that fixes one part of the building: one edge must be 3″ tall for the basement, with the building on top.

With that set, I drew up some simple plans, ultimately deciding on a 6″x9″ building, with big double doors in the long end. The base of the building will be 3D printed, with foam building on top.

Base of the building including the basement.

And thus ends today’s post – with an initial base printing. Onward to actual construction tomorrow

Misc, Science Fiction

The Workbench This Weekend, Jan 26 2025

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Spent most of the weekend doing online Society of Creative Anachronism nerdery (it was glorious) but did have some time to start planing my Build Something Contest 2025 for Lead Adventure Forum.

Planning a 28mm (32mm? whatever…) small shuttle suitable to get high priority cargo or a group of heavily armed ruffians/operatives/etc on and off the planet of their choice. Basically keeping it to about the footprint of a Letter/A4 sized sheet of paper, definitely inside 12″ nose to tail so it fits width-wise in a banker’s box for storage.

I laid a handful of figures on graph paper and figured that for the six-or-so figures I wanted the cargo bay to handle it needed to be somewhere around 70mm wide and 110mm long (and about 40mm tall internally, but that’s for later) so I cut up a few bits of card, grabbed the graph paper, raided the bits box and started laying things out.

Very early shuttle planning. The cargo bay is a separate piece of card so I can move it around. Click for larger.

The current plan is to build the box of the cargo bay first, then use the four hexagons as internal frames for two engines, then do wings under/around the engines for a stubby vaguely aerodynamic shape. Planning extended sides to protect the landing ramp from engine thrust, and a long vaguely streamlined nose at the other end.

Other details very, very much To Be Determined as I start building! I have raided and sorted the Bits Mountain and in addition to the plastic hex bases seen above there’s a few other things I’ve put aside.

Stuff! Wheels from Gaslands plastics for landing gear, various other scrap or leftover plastic bits for details, a blister of resin computer screens from the late, lamented Antenociti, a couple of which will probably show up in the cargo bay.

The weird eyes are from the local dollar store, there’s various leftover plastic scrap and kit pieces, an old blister of Antenociti comm screens that’ll provide cool details inside the cargo bay, and some other bits and pieces for decades of hording/collecting this sort of stuff.

Actual building is supposed to start Feb 1st, so stay tuned!

To finish up, the traditional workbench shot. Lots of painted figures I need to move into storage to clear the decks for this shuttle build!

The workbench, with shuttle planning underway. Some Mantic Terrain Crate SF fixtures on the left, a whole clutter of mostly-painted figures at the back that need to move to storage solutions, and lots of other clutter…

Best of luck to the other BSC 2025 participants, looking forward to seeing what they do!