Introducing SystemHEX: Our new modular building system
SystemHEX is our new modular building system that allows you to easily create and customize large-scale builds. Our new campaign, Throne & Ash, showcases its potential with the size and variety of the castle layouts you can build.
In this article, we’ll cover the fundamentals of the SystemHEX design, how to implement it in your own builds, and some simple castle layouts using it.
The basics of SystemHEX
SystemHEX is designed around hexagonal tessellation, so every building or wall uses the same hexagon footprint. This means your builds are modular and easily swapped and moved.
The walls best show the mathematics of SystemHEX, as each wall is designed around an angle within a hexagon. There is the straight wall, a gentle curve inwards and outwards, and a tight curve inwards and outwards. They each connect one edge of a hexagon to another.
This way, your walls can always loop back on themselves with the right parts. Here’s an example of an enclosed wall structure and its corresponding hexagonal view to see how it fits together. Ignore the fact that it has no entrance.
While it may seem complicated, it’s very intuitive to use. We recommend doing a test fit before locking it all together to gauge your layout.
How to use SystemHEX
The walls all use a simple male/female locking system, so attaching them is easy, as is swapping them out if you want to change a part later.
The buildings use a wall adaptor we call a connector. All buildings from Throne & Ash come with the required connector to attach the building to walls. The first reason for this is so the buildings can stay consistent in the hexagon footprint. The buildings don’t connect directly to walls, which is made clear by the different connectors. Without the connectors, the buildings wouldn’t fit inside the hexagons evenly and would break your hexagonal tessellation.
Secondly, you can choose to have the buildings connected to a wall or have a buttress. This means you can have multiple connections to a building or have the building entirely standalone.
Simple castle ideas using SystemHEX
Here are three simple modular buildings or castles you can build with SystemHEX that will get you started.
Eastern Outpost
A small garrison, lightly manned by scouts on the fringes of the Kingdom. Uses a gatehouse, walls, turrets, and oval bastions.
The Watch Towers
Stationed north of the Kingdom, these towers carefully watch for invaders from the Wastelands. It consists of a gatehouse, walls, turrets, and two towers.
Fort León
This well-defended Fort has long defended against the elements and dangers of the Western plains, with its garrison of soldiers at the ready. It contains a gatehouse, a square bastion and barracks, a tower, walls, turrets, and oval bastions.
SystemHEX takes castle building to a new level. Its modular building system and simple-to-use features make it perfect for creating your fantasy castle. Try it with our Throne & Ash range of 3D print files for a castle of epic proportions.
How large is the “hex” the system is based on? It might be nice to have a blank hex PDF template that we could print on paper, to better help plan our tabletops
Great idea, we can sort that out. The hexagon footprint is 200×173.2mm, so straight edge to straight edge is 173.2mm, which is the length of a straight wall
Intention is to still use openlock for building kits or is this intended to replace that approach ongoing?
Definitely not replacing it, SystemHEX is just a new modular system for creating larger-scale scenery
can you comment on what the letters mean printed besides the connecters? looking at some models I’ve seen the letter B and the letter D
Great point! This means the wall connectors are designed to go on the buildings’s connector labeled as B or D. So B is only intended to go on B. You’ll notice on the square bastion building base it has B on two opposite sides and D on the other opposite sides. It is so the building continues along the hex tessellation, if you used B connectors on all 4 sides you’d have a cross and would no longer tessellate
What if you want a square castle? Does it support that?
I was trying to do the exact same thing. There doesn’t seem to be a way to make a simple square.
Hi, yes, a square is possible by using square bastions on the corners. On the campaign landing page you can see one built this way
We’ve just added an article on how we built it here: https://www.printablescenery.com/2025/04/28/how-to-build-a-square-castle/
Any plans of doing a “hex” base floor (“grassy”) / simple terrain set so we can integrate into hex movement system.
Hi there!
Great work so far. I am excited to see all those parts from the stretch goals pop off my printer 😉
Any plans to create a software like TerrainTinker for planning those epic castles?
Thank you!
We don’t have plans at the moment, but we have been talking with Ryan about how to do this
Hello
I love this modular system and I’m planning to build a full fledged battlemap with it during the year.
Are the HEX images you used for the examples illustrating the HEX system available somewhere for each wall and building ?
I think it would be an easy compromise to allow us to plan castles in any image manipulation software (gimp, photoshop, krita…) without needing a dedicated software (And now that I think about it, a software to manipulate hex tiles must already exist)
Big thanks and I can’t wait for each stretch goal to be available 😀