# Mourning Spire: A New ClickyWalls Build Begins
I’ve started work on the next ClickyWalls build set, and it’s something I’ve wanted to tackle for a long, long time: a church.
I’ve called it **Mourning Spire** — mourning with a “u”. I just love the sound of the name, and it feels right for a build that brings together grand architecture, a graveyard and the darker possibilities of what might be lurking underneath.
It’s still early days, but I’m finally getting to bring this one to life, and I’m already having a lot of fun with it.
## A building full of stories
One of the things I love about the idea of a church is just how much it can bring to a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. There’s the religious element, of course, along with healing, monks, priests and paladins. That alone gives you plenty of opportunities for interesting characters, encounters and stories.
Then there’s the graveyard, which opens the door to a whole other set of possibilities. Zombies, skeletons and whatever else you fancy having crawl out of the ground can all find a home here.
Add tombs and crypts, and you can take the adventure further into the darkness. A church gives you a reason to explore what’s above ground, while leaving plenty of room for discoveries beneath it. That combination is a big part of what makes this such an appealing build for me.
## Something with real presence
I feel like Mourning Spire could become one of those flagship builds for ClickyWalls. I want it to have a real wow factor: something that looks grand and impressive when you put it on the table.
Church architecture gives me so much to work with. Crosses, narrow slit windows, Gothic arches, huge stained-glass windows and buttresses all offer opportunities for interesting details. Then there are the roofs, with dormers, different pitches and all those angles coming together.
It’s a chance to build something where the appearance is a huge part of the purpose. I want that sense of height, weight and grandeur to come through in the finished model.
The plan is to put the church on a raised platform. This will give it a substantial base and allow for steps leading up to the main entrance, which is a feature I’m particularly looking forward to.
It also creates space underneath the building. And beneath a church, that space feels like the obvious place for a crypt — or at least the beginning of one.
## Choosing the stonework
For the walls, I’ve decided to use the breeze block style from the Breezy Gantry and Creaking Gantry. I really love how those blocks look once they’re painted, and I think they’ll suit this building beautifully.
They’re also very similar in appearance to the castle blocks, so there’s plenty of scope to mix and match them with those pieces. That’s always satisfying: creating something new that also gives you more possibilities with the builds you already have.
I’ve already designed the T connectors and elbow connectors with this texture. Those should work really well with the gantries too, so even these first pieces will have uses beyond Mourning Spire.
## Curved walls and a glimpse of the wizard’s tower
Before settling on the church, my other choice was a wizard’s tower. That’s another build I’ve wanted to do for ages, and although the two buildings might seem quite different, there’s actually some useful overlap.
For Mourning Spire, I want a round tower attached to the side of the church, with a small, narrow spiral staircase inside. It should add an interesting shape to the building and provide a practical route up to the bell tower.
To make that possible, I’ve designed the first small curved wall sections. These are exciting pieces because they’ll give us new ways to build towers, and they’ll also become some of the first building blocks for the future wizard’s tower.
For the church, I’m keeping them fairly simple, with a few different window styles. When I get to the wizard’s tower, I want to explore more elaborate ideas: overhangs, corbels and different roof styles.
So these curved walls are a little taster of what could follow. Choosing the church has also given me a chance to start working on some of the pieces that the wizard’s tower will need.
## Buttresses and a chunky, solid profile
I’ve also started designing the buttresses, which will be an important part of the church’s appearance.
The lower sections will use standard ClickyWalls half walls. As the buttresses rise against the sides of the church, sloping sections will bring them inwards, making them narrower towards the top.
The shapes remind me a little of some of the chimney stacks we’ve done before, but here they’ll give the church that substantial, reinforced look. I want the building to feel chunky and solid, with these supporting structures adding detail and an interesting profile along its sides.
They’re one of those features that should make a real difference to how the whole building feels once everything comes together.
## An entrance to match
The other pieces I’ve designed so far are the main entrance door and its archway.
Both are **two storeys high**, giving the entrance the height and scale I want for this building. It follows a similar approach to the entrances we made for the castle portcullis sections and the large castle gate towers, where those tall doors helped give the buildings their imposing appearance.
There’s some cross window and Gothic arch window detailing in the design too, helping establish the character of the church from these first pieces.
And, as always, the doors will be functional and printed in place.
There’s still plenty to design, but I’m enjoying seeing Mourning Spire begin to take shape. Between the stonework, curved towers, buttresses and the possibility of a crypt underneath, there’s a lot here that I’ve been looking forward to making for a very long time.
I’ve included a few screenshots of the build so far so you can see how it’s coming along.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to head over to the Studio to see what’s new!
Modular tabletop terrain for dice rolling legends!
Build anything from tiny hovels to towering castles and sprawling dungeons — no glue, no magnets, no supports needed.
Grab your free starter set at 👉 [Community](https://community.clickywalls.com/)
#clickywalls #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #tabletopgaming #3dprinting #3dprinted #ttrpg #warhammer #terrain #tabletoprpg #modularterrain #dndterrain
Join the conversation: read and discuss this design journal in Built for Play.
