Not exactly a game, so this is a bit out of bounds, but I recently had a desire to try one of those castle kits made by Hirst.
I've been aching to try this out for some time now, and I finally had the excuse to buy one of the molds, this one to be precise, and today I tried casting the first of what I'm told will be seventeen batches needed to make this particular model.
I've cast in plaster before, and I've cast in quick setting resin. I've even cast in five minute epoxy resin. What I've never done is cast in Hydrocal, a special scenic plaster used by railway modelers for making rock-faces, tunnel mouths and bridges.
The fist mix was way too thin, I only mixed enough for half a pour and so this was an immediate tip-it-out-and-start-again job. The second mix seemed okay but also seemed to form a skin of thicker plaster over a watery liquid. Very odd.
I decided to give it a go and made the pour into the mold, getting the plaster everywhere on account of making three times too much. Clean-up was a joy.
The Hydrocal sets up in about 40 minutes, at least it does well enough to demold the castings. Mine were quite disappointing. Crumbly and covered in bubble voids.
The voids were caused by my mixing technique which trapped a lot of air in the thick layer. I'll use the same technique I use to debubble resin castings by using my scroll saw as a vibrating table.
The crumbliness of the castings was caused, I think, by having too wet a mix in the pour. I'll know better next time.
Pictures to come, hopefully of a perfect set of castings.
Meanwhile, you should check out Hirst Arts molds yourself. I should mention that even the bad castings will be useful in the finished model and that even my poor first attempt produced some outstanding detail in the finished castings. The workmanship of the molds and the ingenuity of the kits themselves is a pure delight. Not only that, the subjects are atmospheric and cover a wide range of architectural subjects.
The only problem I can see is finding somewhere to display the finished models.
