Stackers Revisited

One of my very early crafting projects was a set of Black Magic Craft style dungeon tiles. In the original post about them, I mentioned almost in passing that I’d also made a set of “stackers” to go along with the tiles. For those not familiar with the concept, I’ll refer you back to the original BMC video where Jeremy introduced them based on an idea from one of his subscribers:

I’ve put my stackers to enough use that I’ve considered making more of them just to expand the possibilities of what I can assemble with them. But there’s been a related idea drifting around in the back of my mind for a while, and I’ve been kind of wanting to do a simple back-to-basics build, so I decided to work on something to supplement my existing stacker collection rather than to just add more duplicate pieces.

Corner Stackers

One of the shortcomings of the traditional 3″x2″ and 2″x2″ stackers that I noticed early on was that their layout didn’t lend itself well to making symmetrical corners. You can put together all sorts of configurations, but you’re kind of stuck with those jagged edges. (Not that this isn’t a perfectly valid layout, mind you, but it’s nice to have more flexibility!)

So I started thinking about making some corner pieces to fill in those spots. I quickly realized not only that there were 2 useful layouts (which I’ll refer to as “raised” and “sunken” for lack of better terms), but that cutting the foam for one layout automatically produced the parts needed for the other layout! I decided to make 8 of each kind of corner, so I sketched out the size and number of foam cuts I’d need to make to achieve this.

Then it was off to the Proxxon (paid link). All this can be done by hand, of course, since it’s just simple measure-and-cut operations, but the hot wire cutter makes it faster and easier. Step one was to make piles of 2×2 and 3×3 squares from 1/2″ thick XPS foam.

For the squares that would need further slicing, I cut 1″ wide and 2″ wide cardboard strips that I could lay across each square during the cutting process to stop the wire at the right place rather than free-handing it. With the proxxon set for a 1″ width between guide and wire, the rest of the cuts were quick and simple.

I quickly amassed a collection of stacker guts.

I laid out all the components as the would be glued together and began to assemble them. I was going to let them all sit at least overnight at this point anyway so PVA glue would be fine rather than something faster drying, but I decided to use tacky glue (paid link) rather than normal white glue because it would be a little more resistant to the pieces sliding around while it dried. In the pre-assembly pictures below, the stackers I’m referring to as “raised” are the ones with a 1″ square at the top, and the “sunken” ones have the 1″ recess on the bottom.

The next evening with the glue dried I black-and-mod-podged ’em up, and the next night I painted them. While I tend to use more browns and multiple highlight tones when doing stone these days, I wanted these to match my existing tiles and stackers so I gave them the same simple paint job I’d done on those: medium-gray base coat, light-gray dry-brush, and a black wash.

Playing with my blocks

These corners, it turns out, are pretty versatile on their own. Like their namesakes, they stack together well, so they’re useful for making raised platforms and the like. Beyond that there are lots of easy examples that can be quickly thrown together just from these new pieces.

But it’s when combined with traditional stackers that these really shine. That is, shine, in a, um, matte finish stonework sort of…er… non-shiny shiny… way. I built a section of recessed-floor sewer tunnel and an arena just playing around with all the pieces.