Getting Started

A dice tower is a tower that you drop dice into and they roll out into a contained area—no more dice rolling off the table or cocking against unit bases! They're really easy to make and you can customise them to the theme of your army.

The basic design is to have two or three angled pieces of wood inside the tower which the dice bounce off on their way to the bottom, rolling them and directing them to the end zone.

We will use a piece of 2.5 mm thick balsa wood. A 1000 x 100 x 2.5 mm sheet is sufficient for a small tower and can be purchased from a hobby store for about £1.

You'll also need a blade, a ruler, some PVA glue, and your choice of paint, flock, etc.

Making the Tower

First, you need to design your tower (there's a few ideas at the bottom of the page).

I'm going for a generic square building with a small fenced-off end zone. This tower will be used with my Vampire Counts army, so I want it to look like an abandoned farm building with some gravestones outside.

When you've decided on the shape and size, measure and cut the pieces you need. For most designs, you'll need a base, 3 walls, 1 half-wall (between the tower and the end zone), 2 or 3 internal pieces of the same width for the dice to bounce off, and some sort of fencing for the end zone. Cut along the ruler's edge to get straight cuts and follow the grain of the wood to avoid flayed edges.

Next, cut the walls into strips and start gluing them to the base. Cutting strips gives a much better effect than just gluing the whole wall. It's a good idea to place some horizontal pieces inside to add more strength to the structure, especially around the base.

Now glue in the lowest internal piece and finish the back wall.

Continue building up the structure. I added a few boarded-up windows on mine to add to my theme, just cut a few strips into thirds and glue the top and bottom thirds in place, then use the middle thirds as boards across the outside.

When the three main walls are done, add in the remaining internal pieces. I'm only using one more internal piece, but I've stuck two together in a 'T' shape for added strength, and glued it so the tail of the 'T' will be hidden.

Finish off the structure by tidying the appearance and adding some strengthening beams inside. I decided to cut away the front top corners of my walls to put a diagonal roof and I also made a simple removable roof for the rest of the tower so it can be used as scenery if I want.

Add a fence around the end zone to catch the dice—I chose to make a particularly run-down and rickety one consistent with my theme.

For the finishing touches, I added some roof tiles to my diagonal roof by layering small strips of cardboard obtained from cutting up a cereal box. I also added some farm equipment from the zombies sprue and a couple of gravestones. It's best to keep this sort of thing around the edge so it doesn't interfere with the dice when they land.

Finishing Off

To finish the tower, I undercoated it with Chaos Black, painted the walls Scorched Brown, the fence Bestial Brown, and the ground Graveyard Earth, then drybrushed the sand Bleached Bone and added some static grass and clump foliage. The roof tiles were painted with Dark Flesh.

Some Tower Ideas

These towers are easy to make and you can theme them for pretty much any army. A tall Elven tower could be made from a cardboard tube (such as a Pringles tube) with a prestigious garden below (for High Elves) or dark spikes up the side and a few slaves mining ore at the bottom (for Dark Elves). A ramshackle Orc tower could be made along similar lines as my farm building, but with more bits stuck on the sides. A typical medieval townhouse design would be ideal for an Empire dice tower. A large tree or treehouse could be used for a Wood Elf dice tower. And so on.