Hi, a newbie here with a few questions. I just purchased the Castleworks Ultimate kit.

I'm considering having the pdf files printed out for me at a printing shop for $1/page. I haven't run the numbers but my guess is that this is reasonable when compared against the costs in cardstock, ink, wear and tear on my printer and just general pain in the behind of doing that part myself. Thoughts?

Also, the company says the can't do 110lb cardstock. They can do 100lb. Can I get away with that or will the structure be too flimsy?

Any help, suggestions or advice for a complete novice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Weclome to the forums! Have fun with CWU. It is one of my favorite sets. I hope that you get a chance to post some build pics.

I did a quick test through the Staples online print centers and it looks like a page of 110lb cardstock in color would be about $0.67USD. I tested with the Hinterlands TLX tiles / no grid PDF, which came out to be $4.70 USD for seven pages.

Personally, I like printing myself. I invested in a great printer which I found online, lightly used, for a fraction of the retail price, but I suppose that is really up to you.

I would shop around a bit more on pricing, however. Places like Staples offer shipping as well, so even if you cannot find a local place that is more competitive, you may be able to find something online.

Also, see if you can do a test print to make sure that (a) the stock you get it printed on is heavy enough, (b) the colors look great, and (c) it can be scored and worked with without issue. And, don't let them do any funny scaling on the images!

I'd hate to drop a pile of money on prints only to find out there was miscommunication on the right type of stock, or the colors aren't as vibrant as you thought, etc. Seems unlikely, but an ounce of prevention...

I've been considering outsourcing my printing as well. I live practically across the street from a Staples. I've been wondering if they'd let me do papercrafting demonstrations on the weekends there in return for basic office supplies or printing services.

Welcome to the fold, Orin.

Rule #1 for printing: No scaling (scaling screws up the dimensions and results in mismatched pieces)
If you get it printed by someone else make sure they print it without scaling.

#2: Castleworks Ultimate (along with almost all WWG's sets) is modular, which means you'll want to print different quantities of each page depending on the layout you want. E.g. one Gatehouse, four towers and a stack of walls.

One thing to be aware of: different printers produce different shades of printout, as can printing on different cardstock. The resulting colour mismatches can be obvious when putting modular sections side by side - not such a problem for gaming or other casual uses, but can be annoying if you want a more seamless look.

In the long run it can work out more economical to get your own printer (provided you get one that's cheap to run per page) and cardstock, however this usually involves a larger upfront cost.

Doing a test print and build is definitely the way to get started. Once you've proven that, then you can feel more confident moving on to larger print and build runs.

Welcome!
Referencing the comment on printing coloration variances, my own first big CWU build turned out as red sandstone rather than the original black/gray colors. You can check out photos on that build here:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12249
Scroll *way* down to see pics. The redness was due to malfunctioning cartridge, but the test pages looked so COOL i had to go with it for that project.

One major benefit to having our own printer is that you can zap out any page(s) you need instantly without the hassle of loading your files on a flashdrive and driving cross town to the printshop. And heaven forbid you forget something on your list for a major printout and make a return trip and arrive *after* business hours! ... Fuel cost for 'shopping' trips has to be considered as well.
My 2-cents worth.

Enjoy the hobby! i will personally attest to that any further questions will be happily addressed by all the wonderful folk here.

@ Zenguy: "fold" - yeah I saw what you did there!

Thanks to all of you for the friendly welcome and helpful advice. Much appreciated.

I checked with Staples - they also charge about $1/page, just like the first place I called (Alphagraphics). Maybe prices are a little higher here in Massachusetts? The only difference is Staples can do 110lb instead of 100lb, so I guess I'm going with them.

I realize now I'm going to have to thoroughly familiarize myself with all the pdf files in advance and plan the entire layout. This is going to be for my kids first Dungeons & Dragons session (yay 5e!). If the castle comes out well I'm going to have to pick up some of the other kits for the caverns beneath the castle, and for a nearby village and an elven forest.

We'll be using 25 or 28mm minis. I'm thinking either 1 inch or unmarked terrain. I'll post updates as things progress.

Pictures - or it never happened ...

I haven't disappeared. Real life got in the way for a little bit and planning out the floor-plan for my first castle is taking longer than I anticipated. I've had to scale back my ambitions several times to make a design that will fit in the available space. And the fact that there isn't a master pdf that shows the dimensions for all the parts made the design work that much more difficult.

I think I'm almost there. I will post a picture of the layout on graph paper soonish. Should I move the design work to another thread? Not sure it belongs here.

Okay, I did some quick and dirty design work using Google Sketchup. It's very crude - just using boxes of the appropriate dimensions to represent walls, towers, etc. I made no effort to add any details that were not necessary to working out the basic footprint. And the pictures don't include the catwalks, various buildings that will be placed inside, etc.

Now let's see if I can figure out how to link to the images:







Hooray, it worked! So my print run should be:

24 six-inch walls
8 three-inch walls
8 curved walls
4 three-story towers
2 two-story towers
3 gatehouses (not sure about this - the inner two I'd like to modify to just use the portcullis and not the drawbridge. Maybe double sets of large regular doors instead of the drawbriges? I'll have to double check the pdf's).
Assorted buildings, stairs, catwalks, crenelations, etc. (not shown)

I've bought most of the supplies I need. Gotta run out one more time for glue and then run over to Staples. Looking forward to feedback, advice and constructive criticism.

Looking very good.

A minor castle design point: the keep would be normally at the back of the second section (assuming the back of the castle is harder to attack) so that invaders have to pass through two death trap courtyards before they get to the keep.

Super busy painting miniatures and cutting cardstock in preparation for this Saturday's game. Will post details when I have some time.

Looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, tonight I'm working on my CWU angled wall kitbash - but that's another thread...

Well, Saturday night's game went really well. Everyone had fun and is looking forward to playing again in two weeks. However, I had to make some changes to my plans.

The first change was the decision to push back the party's arrival at the castle and instead have them on their way there through the wilderness via a mountain pass. To that end I purchased the Hinterland Cliffs and started assembling them first (and thus making the title to this thread inaccurate yet again. Sorry.).


In the picture you can also see a few of the paper miniatures I hastily printed out as opponents for my players (thank you Seven Wonders). I printed them out on label paper and attached them to the cardstock scrap that was accumulating as I cut out the Cliffs.

One thing I severely underestimated was the amount of time required to cut out and assemble the cardstock. As a result, I had only a few pieces prepared for the game. My solution was to rewind the scenario even further, putting the players on board a ship (a cheap one I had put together a few years ago). They were intercepted by, and fought with, pirates. In the course of the battle both ships run aground and the fight spills out onto the shore:


I used the few pieces I had along the shoreline and temporarily substituted cardboard boxes for the cliffs. You can't see it in the picture, but I took the cliff walls I had and leaned them against the side of the boxes so at least there was something to see.

Next session the players can travel via the overland route to the castle using the completed Cliffs. So I've bought myself two extra weeks to finish them and four weeks to complete the castle.

More soonish.

Some thoughts I meant to share before regarding my decision to hold off on the castle.

The more I looked at it, the less happy I was with my design. As Zenguy pointed out, and as I was aware, it was somewhat atypical as far as medieval castles go. The challenge is that there are a number of factors I'm trying to balance.

I want each castle in the game to look distinctive, something that is hard to do when recycling the same cardstock parts. So I want to give each castle a unique feature, hence the odd position for the keep in the first design. Also, I don't want the castle to be too big and impressive, otherwise how the hell am I going to top myself later? This castle is supposed to be on the edge of civilization (Keep on the Borderlands style). I need to leave room for whatever the castle in the capitol looks like.

Holding off on the castle allows me to reconsider the design and makes it a bigger deal when they finally get there. I can build up to it using the Hinterland Cliffs and possibly the Hinterland Forest as well (picked that one up too).

Your castles can use the same basic parts, just in different ways:
- differing types of "castle": plain single tower, simple square keep, larger extensive castle
- number of successive defensible areas
- area size of the courtyard(s)
- number and height of towers
- overall shape
- simple vs. complex gatehouse
- moat, or not
- one or more sides at cliff's edge
- built against or even into the side of the mountain
- number of town buildings inside the protective walls
- number of town buildings *outside* the protective walls
- various defenses as needed: ballista platforms, covered hoardings, curtain arches, etc.
- CWU has 4 different walls patterns (including stuccos)
- stables for knights/cavalry?
- storage buildings for wagons, foodstuffs, or locally produced commercial resource items

Just remember that every castle can be considered a living thing. It has a reason for existing, and grows in different ways to adapt to changing conditions - and the local available resources.

Hope this helps to expand your thinkable options...

Oh, yeah... what's UNDER the castle? What's it hiding? Hm?

I am enjoying following this one. Thanks for posting.