Hey all, first timer and utter papercraft newb. I purchased the TLX Armory apartment set, and so far things are going great. I am having a bit of trouble when it comes to making stair cases however. There seems to be no instructions, and a forum search came up dry, so here I am.

The main stairs are fine, they fold up nice, and look like they should be perfect. The problem I have is with the sides of the stairs... in the pictures there is a side and back to the stairs making them a complete unit - I can't seem to find that anywhere. I have what appears to be 3x sides, but they're less than 2" tall - much too small.

Anyone else run into this, or am I overlooking something simple?

Thanks!



Edit - ok, I think the sides are the right height (same as the walls at least, but the stair section is almost as long as the full sheet of paper - too big to fit... instructions would be nice for these - lots of tabs with glue marks and not many well defined cut lines.

I believe that set was made during a weird period where somehow our own internal development version of the instructions lost the stairs page. Try downloading the freebie instructions from the SOM page and see if it's in there:

http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/in ... cts_id=303

I couldn't find instructions for stairs in any of the sets I own, or the freebie instructions off of HV Streets. Did I just miss something? I feel like my wife just asked me to get something out of the fridge, and to noone's surprise, I can't find what is right in front of me...

I remember fiddling with my first set of stairs for a while before having that aha! moment where things lined up. My first two sets of stairs came out pretty wobbly too, but still useable.

Each TLX stair step folds inward, giving more room for the base of a miniature to sit. When you fold the walls together, there are glue areas which give you an idea of how the stairs need to line up. So the stairs kind of smush like an accordion, and it should all fit.

Maybe I did my stairs incorrectly, but my process was to first glue the sides together. Then I glued the top steps in place, and one by one glued the steps in place.

Thanks for the quick reply - unexpected, and most welcome.

Checked over the instructions there, and no stairs. I had actually downloaded those previous to purchasing (wanted to know what I was getting into)

Any other possibilities?

I'd try that, but the sides appear to have a tread depth of 1/2"...and the stairs themselves are 1"... nothing looks like it will add up

Ok, I've got a good idea of what you're talking about...but I'm not seeing anything that fits. I took a couple snap shots with my phone so you can see what I'm looking at.



I'm presuming that the item on the left is one of the sides. There are 3 of those on page 2, along with the stair treads on the right.



I folded up the stair treads and laid them beside the side... see the size difference? Nothing lines up. Page 1 has what appears to be the side that contains the back, but i still can't wrap my head around the size discrepancy.

Excellent!

There should be three pairs of sides, one pair for 1" width, 1.5" width and 3" width. The 1.5" width will have 1.5" deep stairs, so they won't fit the 1" or 3" width sides. Each pair has a short side, and a long side. The "long" side has the back flap as part of it.

Take those stairs and instead of folding them so the steps are square, fold them so the fronts of the steps angle inwards. That's the "Z" shape I was talking about. You'll find that this'll reduce the height quite a bit.

On the left, you've got one of the sides. You want to fold that along the diagonal and glue it together, like you do a wall piece. Ditto for the other side that corresponds to that one. Once you've done that, and you've got the correct steps piece for the size stairs you're building, the folding of the steps should make sense because the glue tabs on the steps should line up perfectly with the glue areas on the sides.

You're almost there!

Almost there
The step risers are not vertical tho...push them in further so they line up with the slope on the step gluing tabs tab . They will drop in a series of "z" folds not like real life steps.
The sides are cut with the inside and outside of the stairs in one piece....See the part on the sides that has the glue tabs?...That becomes the inside of the stairs...score and fold it over along the slope of the stair steps, and glue it down...You should be left with four white triangles on that piece that you can now cut off, and an inside to the stairs with gluing areas that fit the tabs on the steps.
Glue the steps to the tabs, starting from the top of the side that has the stairback, and working down one step at a time, then glue the other side ,again one step at a time to finish

Hope that helps...and good luck!

Ninja'd!...But between mproteau and I , you should get the idea

So that's where I'm at... If I REALLY squish the stairs in, I MIGHT be able to get it to fit, but there's no way a 1" model could sit on it. Is that what you were referring to? In all the promo pictures the stairs are beautifully square... seems strange that I can't make them like that.

http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/in ... ts_id=314#

The pic of the stairs there is what I'm going for...no crazy squished steps there...

Really squish it, brother. Really squish it.

If you take the second step from the top and push it in so that it lines up with where the glue area expect the step to be, it'll work out. Have a go at gluing it together that way, and see if in fact you have miniatures that don't fit at all. I can imagine there are minis that won't fit on the stairs, but I think a good many will fit just great.

Really squishing gets me this:


I was hoping to build this:

You've got the right idea about the tread in you last build photo. The treads angle in to be wide enough for figure bases and still have a realistic looking number of steps.

But you are not supposed to cut the sides of the stair walls like that.

The last photo is a computer generated image, not a build photo. The risers of the steps shouldn't look like that.

They look like this:
http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/in ... ts_id=306#

Does this image help? Until I get a chance to do a build, here's a close-up of my stairs:



Hopefully you can see that the sides are square, but the stairs angle in.

I was experimenting with the piece really. Cutting those pieces out seemed to give it a cleaner feel, but the fit is a bit sloppy. And trying to squeeeeeze the steps in and glue is a pain.

Just in looking around the site NONE of the images of stairs are squished... so why are the only ones we can build squished in like this? How hard would it be to make stairs like in every photo on this site?

The inside of the steps is designed to slant inward in order to fit miniatures with bases on the steps. LD may have said it better, but I thought I'd chime in as well. Here is another picture:

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No problem...glad we could help

One word of advice, glue all the steps to the stairs on one side FIRST, then the other side. You'll have less trouble with that whole "squishing" thing. also, something to be aware of for next time:



You cut out the large, white area just below the steps.

You're not supposed to do that.

That is the gluing surface is for the entire side of the staircase. It's a structural element and it will help you align things better.

Also, as stated here and elsewhere on the forum, the promotional images for Mayhem Armoury, Apartments and Mayhem Under Construction are all 3D renders not reflective of the actual look of the stairs, that's why I pointed you to the Mayhem Destroyed promos that showed the actual stairs. Sorry for the confusion and good luck on your future builds!

EDIT: And just to try and make things EXTRA clear, behold the long suffering stairs instructions:

Hooray for the actual instructions!! Thanks a lot - you guys are great. Hopefully this little adventure helps out someone else other than me some time along the road.

ArenaWorks had the square-pattern stairs, sort of. And Skull Cove had square stairs.

InteriorWorks Pubs and Inns has slotted (so the figure base slid into the slot) square pattern steps.

I'm sure there are other variants in the old stuff too.

Alexio