Let me first start by apologizing for the HTML within this review; as I don’t know HTML, I keep using Microsoft Word and saving it as a web page, which prompts Word to use its fabled Clown Shoes filter to ensure that the final product looks like two different editors were working on it. People keep urging me to learn HTML; I keep imagining this as being similar to learning how to churn your own butter. I miss the days when you could just type, you know? I miss those days.

The first time that I heard about Hirst Arts was when I was offered some free molds by Allan Sugarbaker, in order to review them. At the time, I had no idea what they looked like, and had enough on my plate at the time, so I passed them up.

The second time I saw them, I wound up getting obsessed. Their website is jam-packed with wall to wall tips on making game scenery, and each and every picture is the scenery equivalent of really, really good porn. You can just spend hours and hours browsing through their website, seeing all the different ways that you can use their molds and their blocks in order to make fantastic-looking scenery – and for that matter, they’ve got enough tips on making regular scenery in there that you don’t need to buy their molds.

So, about two years ago, I decided to buy five molds and started my career as a guy who made scenery with bricks. And I’m here to report that while Hirst Arts bricks can look gorgeous like you wouldn’t believe, there’s also a lot of hidden costs and issues that go along with them.

See, I’ve made scenery before, mostly inspired by sites like TerraGenesis and points related. They subscribe to the Found Crap model of making scenery, which involves taking insulation foam and various doohickies and putting it together to make something that looks like it would have a place in the Warhammer universe. You can make some really good-looking stuff, but it tends to look like somebody fired a shotgun full of crap at a piece of PVC piping until you paint it and make it look good.

Hirst Arts blocks, by contrast, look good from the minute that you shuck them out of the mold. They’re essentially Lego blocks made out of hardened plaster; if you use the appropriate kind of dental plaster, then they’re almost totally unbreakable. Because they’re completely modular, you can put them together to form all sorts of things, especially if you paint them to look a particular way. (For instance, I was able to use a flat triangular block as a keypad, just by painting a keypad on one of the flat surfaces.) If you’re not feeling inventive, then you can always use any of the innumerable examples on Hirst Arts’ website.

Their promise is awesome. But there’s a cost. Actually, there’s several overlapping costs, each of which doesn’t seem to bad until you put them all together.

An individual mold will cost you roughly between 25-35 dollars; and given how many different bricks you can get out of each mold, that’s a positive bargain. As a matter of fact, you could probably use a single mold to make all kinds of crazy stuff.

But in order to use the molds properly, you need to buy the appropriate kind of plaster. Plaster of Paris essentially has the tensile strength of salt when it’s used in Hirst Arts blocks, so buying some kind of hard plaster is essential. That’s not terribly expensive – Merlin’s Magic and Excalibur plasters, available through Clint Supplies, costs about $50 for a 50 pound box – but it’s another expense to add onto a single mold.

You’re not quite done yet. Next, you should buy – or find – some Legos in order to create a straight wall in order to make sure that your bricks are glued together straight, or you’ll wind up creating crooked walls. That’s about $7 if you buy cheap Legos. Then you’ll need something to organize those bricks; that’s about $20 for a really excellent screw organizing cabinet. Hirst Arts has some excellent diagrams of how to build a cheap vibrating table to drive bubbles from the bottom of the mold to the top, so that they won’t mar the surface of your bricks with tiny holes. That’s about $40. Your initial investment of $35 can blossom to…let’s see: 35 + 50 + 7 + 20 + 40 = $152.

Now, that’s using the best of everything. The amazingly helpful folks on the Hirst Arts message boards – which I can’t recommend enough – have found a number of ways to cut costs. If you don’t feel like spending $50 on high-quality dental plaster, Hydrostone plaster can be used instead, which is much cheaper. You could also buy a piece of plywood and put some sponges on the bottom, creating a “bang board” which you can pound on in order to drive those damn bubbles to the surface. (You’d be better off with the vibration table, honestly.) So that’s about $102; less if you want to use thread organizers instead of a $20 screw organizer. But just be aware that costs can blossom beyond the initial investment.

Another problem with the molds doesn’t actually have to do with the molds themselves, but instead has to do with the process involved with making the bricks. In order to mold the bricks properly, you have to mix up the plasters, then pour it into the holes in the mold – except that the plaster itself likes to play games. If you don’t measure out the exact ratio of plaster to water beforehand, then you can wind up with plaster that’s too thin – creating short blocks – or too thick, which creates blocks with huge bubbles in them.

It’s even worse if you’re doing bricks with a lot of little details on them, such as the studded altar floor tiles on mold #43. On top of that, most plaster has to be watched; because Excalibur “sinks”, you have to put too much plaster on, then scrape off the excess when it finishes shedding all of its excess water. And if you happen to scrape too vigorously, or if you catch the edge of one of the mold holes with your scraper, then you wind up getting flecks of plaster everywhere. And the place where the mold rests usually winds up with a little frame of hardened plaster around it, unless you put down a paper towel first – which you can do, but then it’s harder to scrape plaster off the towel to put it back on the mold.

These complaints would be nitpicky, but thanks to the geometric precision of the blocks, a brick that isn’t cast correctly can throw everything else off – at least, if they’re short. I’m to understand that Merlin’s Magic is much better than Excalibur for casting Hirst Arts blocks – it’s specifically designed for that, and it doesn’t sink nearly as much, weighs less – but when you’ve got a spare twenty-five pounds of Excalibur lying around, another fifty pounds of Merlin’s Magic is a hard sell.

Many of my complaints here – at least, about the plaster – have been addressed on the forums and in the website’s tutorials, particularly about the bubble problem; there’s ways to get around that, including using Jet Magic dishwashing liquid to break the surface tension of the water, letting the plaster flow more easily. But you can’t make bricks casually; it’s an investment of time and effort.

It’s also worth noting that the average brick – at least, one made with Excalibur dental plaster – tend to be heavy. I initially picked up Hirst Arts blocks with the intent of creating pieces of scenery to sell on eBay, but the sheer amount of weight involved with a single piece meant that my shipping charges would have been prohibitive. Merlin’s Magic is a little lighter, but the weight of individual blocks adds up to a pretty heavy piece of scenery.

It’s also worth noting that while there’s no particular limitation on the ways that you can stick the blocks together – no interlocking mechanism - they don’t entirely adapt themselves well to generic applications – the dungeon molds work best when you’re putting together a dungeon, in other words. I attempted to create a small chapel out of some dungeon blocks, and wound up creating something that was almost the spitting image of a dungeon hallway. Paint and creativity can still turn it into a chapel, of course, but they are tuned to a specific purpose; the bricks are a disassembled dungeon, not generic blocks that can be fit together to any purpose. The molds have been hurt by their original purpose of creating dungeons – the age of dungeon-crawling and nothing but dungeon-crawling is over – and while newer molds work very well with Warhammer 40,000 and the Star Wars collectible miniatures games, there’s still a lot of stuff that’s focused on building one particular type of building.

At the same time, you can do a lot with the blocks and your imagination. Some absolute genius on the Hirst Arts forums created the finished blocks within Google Sketchup, allowing you to create a blueprint for what you want before you glue one block to another. There’s also innumerable examples of brilliant work that other people have done, including a mockup of an M.C Escher building that looks almost exactly like the original drawing.

To review more specific molds:

Mold #42: Gothic Arena Accessories

This is actually a good pick if you’re looking to buy a single mold – it’s extremely versatile. While it’s designed to work with other parts of the Gothic Arena set, you can easily use it to make standalone pieces – altars, gravestones, standalone doors, and similar stuff.. Even better is the chess piece base, which can either be used to make a Gothic column or a chess-piece style base for a miniature. (If you’re feeling really ambitious, there’s a gigantic chessboard depicted on the website that looks fantastic.) I’d recommend this piece first among all.

Mold #43: Gothic Panel Accessories

Buh. This is actually my least favorite mold, for a number of reasons. The altar floor base bits are lined with little studs, which are extremely difficult cast correctly – don’t expect to get a clean cast unless you put a lot of effort into ensuring that there’s no air bubbles in the bottom of the mold. (Mind you, the floor panels look fantastic when used in conjunction with other bits, which is why I bought the mold.) While there’s some nice panels for an altar, they look a lot bloopier and more…I don’t know, pastel than the altar pieces from mold #42; they look modern Christian, rather than Vampire’s Tomb or Bleeding Christ. The gargoyle included has very little detail – I mean, it’s plaster, not pewter, but it’s made worse by the fact that it’s hard to cast correctly. The little frilly bits that you’re supposed to peg onto the tops of altars are thing and again lack the sharp edges of the altar pieces from mold #42. It’s not a terrible mold, and you can make some nice stuff out of it just by its lonesome, but I like #42 better.

Mold #40: Basic Block Mold

Does what it says it does. Not much that can really be described here; pretty much invaluable if you’re making a structure of any kind. A little overpriced at $34, though, I think.

Mold #65: Ruined Tower

This is just an excellent mold overall, but it’s designed for a specific purpose – making an awesome Assault on Weathertop-style ruined castle. It can be a little difficult to get some of the pieces to fit together, particularly in the stairs area, but the overall results look awesome, and the circular tiles can be re-used elsewhere. Another good example of a mold that does one thing and does it well.

Mold #205: Gothic Floor Tiles

Do what they say. You have to cast a lot of tiles to get a floor made out of a single type, but that’s why the molds are almost infinitely reusable. The cobblestone tiles, in particular, are brilliant – they look fantastic, and the join is almost invisible.

Model #311: Skematic Pyramid Mold

Looks fantastic – the mold itself is made out of a heavier, stiffer type of rubber in order to ensure that the brick lines are sharp. I made a Necron bunker using them, and while the paint job wasn’t fantastic, the overall design was pretty good. (You can’t just drybrush them with gray paint, as you can with other molds; picking out the interior lines can be a pain, especially if you don’t prime first.) I think that it’d be an excellent mold for a beginner, particularly because of the relatively simple geometric shapes.

So, are they worth it? Yes, for the most part: But be aware that you have to do a lot of work to get the results that you see on the Hirst Arts web page. If I could start over again, I’d buy certain molds differently, pick a different type of plaster – but I would have to say that I’d definitely do it.

-Darren MacLennan

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