The Modular Pier / Dock

In our ongoing Sartosa campaign for Mordheim we’ve been using a lot of our Venice style terrain and this was one of the components to our Ship Board.  At some point a ship has to return to a dock right?  This is where our modular Pier/Dock system came into play.  So far it’s been comprised of 4 12″ pier pieces that will easily span across a 4′ board.  Each piece has the following components:

  • 6 3″ dowels (Dowels are 1/2″ in diameter)
  • 1 12″ platform built from craft sticks and bass wood (pictures do a better job of explaining these, see below)
  • 24 washers with a 1/2 hole in them
  • Hot Glue to hold the worst of it together
Dowels cut to 3" lengths
Dowels attached to washers to act as the pier's pylons

You may be wondering why there is blue tape on the bottoms of the pylons, well, if you take all the washers and stick them to the blue tape, it gives you a surface that isn’t going to adhere to the hot glue.  After you put a couple of the washers in the tape you can put a drop of hot glue into the washer hole and then stick the pylon right down into it.  This will force the glue to the edges and allow it to stick to the washer.  Once dry, you can peel the tape off and you will have a smooth surface on the bottom of the  washer.

Planked surface ready to be mounted to the pylons
Pylons attached

Each deck is about 6 inches wide (give or take).  I found that Hot Glue was easiest to work with, but offered some problems because the deck weighed enough that it wanted to slip as I was attaching the pylons.  It was a tricky balancing act,but I was able to do it.  The top of the deck is 1″ below the top of the pylon, I drew markings to help me line the deck up and keep things level.  The first one I did was less than level and had to be redone, but that’s neither here nor there.

Example of two pieces and how they looked when joined up
All 4 peirs lined up across the table
Black Base-coat
Beastial brown coat + black wash over the whole thing

It’s safe to say that these are nothing terribly complicated to do or paint.  I didn’t put a whole ton of effort into the paint job as, well….it’s wood.  I’m very happy with the way they turned out and their functionality is great.  They also work well as along side of the Simple Bridges I made to either connect up to one of our ships or to land.  Our goal is always going to be modularity as it gets the most bang out of your terrain, and really, if it means I have to make less to get more  out of it…I’m fine with that!