Making the Inverted Pyramid of Shyish

In preparation for the Malign Portents Coalescence event, and Malign Portents games in general, I built an upside-down Pyramid of Nagash! It’s clearly not The Big Pyramid but it’s a nice scenery piece and gives Vampire Lords on Zombie Dragons a nice place to hang out between charges. Moreover it nicely anchors our tables: We’re playing in Shyish during this MalPo thing.

This pyramid project was also a good example to me about what 3d printing does for the crazy terrain creator… and as an aside, Crazy Terrain is one of my personal pillars of narrative gaming, along with Playing 1500 Points and Naming Your Heroes. I bought a 3D printer last year for making terrain (specifically for making terrain for the NOVA Narrative) and I’ve had it churning on big premeditated projects. For this project, I found that I was able to take the project from Idle Whimsy to Finished Piece in a very short amount of time. Here’s the timeline:

• Saturday, Feb 10th: Out to dinner with my wife, I have a thought: I might be able to print a little pyramid that floats like the Shattered Shards stuff.
• Sunday, Feb 11th: I search Thingiverse and find the incredible Giza Pyramid model. I do some digital editing (it’s got a base, it’s only three sides, it could be bigger) and I’m ready to go.
• Monday, Feb 12th: I print everything.
• Tuesday, Feb 13th: I glue the two halves together (Liquid Nails, natch).
• Wednesday, Feb 14th: Valentines Day. I don’t go near AoS.
• Thursday, Feb 15th: Drill some holes for the clear acrylic hover sticks, prime black. Bake a floor out of Greenstuffworld patterns on SuperSculpy.
• Friday, Feb 16th: Drybrush and done, it’s on the board that night!

For this job I have to give as much credit as possible to the MakerBot team that authored the original Giza Pyramid model, and the Immortal Realms team that made the base. But if anyone wants my (obviously) hastily modified files, reach out to me on Twitter, @borbhobby. Make sure to tip the original creator!