The Temple Of Flowing Sand Structure

Part of Tribes and Patreon January 2026 release.
This set is part of the The Temple of Flowing Sand Bundle.

All the models are test printed and presupported when needed.

Modular OpenLOCK tiles with a playability split option as well as interior and exterior walls, many different floors, stairs, borders, a gargantuan door and massive buttress like pieces, all coming in two version: highly decorated in a fantasy Egyptian style or plain rock, for a more brutalist look. The scripts, in particular, are really carved in so that they should look great with drybrush and/or contrast and/or washes, whether to make them darker or imbued with magic! I picture a sand color wall whose symbols are light up in a light blue fire.

I find I repeat myself in these descriptions, but this set is extremely versatile. You can build huge temples such as the one in the first render here, or you can make tall brutalist ziqqurat style towers, smaller watchtowers, desert shrines, massive walkways between colonnades, entire cities of small squared houses in the minimalist style of an civilization... Given that both interior and exterior walls are present, you can even make sprawling dungeons with these, or give interior rooms to your buildings - the one in the render above, for example, has three interior rooms as well as multi-level platforms (I think verticality on the battlemat is great, and these pieces adds a bit of that.) There is also an open roof option - mainly floors with extra decorative blocks, that make the map even more interesting - what if the party rogue is ready to ambush the Flowing Sand cultists from above, through the roofs beams? I imagine the roof to be open so that the sun can come in the temple, but these can always be covered with cloth or other hobby materials (or just filled with floors) if you want a structure that is easier to defend. Of course, all of that is extremely modular and rearrangeable, so that with one set you can basically run the full arc of a campaign. Then, by switching the more ancient Egypt themed pieces in or out, you can set your adventures in a whole new culture.

I didn't put any "sculpted sand" in these pieces because that would just look either too smooth, or too large to be believable, and I find that putting it on your tile with hobby materials (or the good old real world sand with pva glue) is just so much better looking, more customizable and at the same time easy to do. I picture the central hole as being full of water, or sand - yeah, definitely magic sand! - and you can make a whole temple dedicated to that, with many openings dedicated to different blessed fluids, or gaping abysses, or… you name it!

Most of the pieces are magnetized, some are hollowed to save resin, more on that in the instruction section. Since these buildings can be very complex - the main temple build is for sure - I added extra color-coded information in the Building Instructions section. Not the most elegant colors, but they should make the whole thing easier to understand.

While designing the whole thing so many ideas for quests, encounters and riddles kept coming to mind. I can picture the party coming in the temple to steal a magic item from its undead guardians, or maybe they get ambushed in it by a snake god' cultists as they were questioning the priests of a sand god cult. Or maybe, after getting lost in the desert they find shelter in this abandoned temple, and they have to resist the assaults of the sand demons that where hunting them, just to be forced to flee deep in the lower levels of the structure, hoping it leads somewhere that is not their death.

Or again, if you build many smaller houses with this set they can be used to explore a corner of the sprawling city of an ancient and forgotten culture. Maybe they arrive at the many staired temple-pools where the lizard people that built it where generated. Maybe the party is infiltrating the high wall of the desert city where their favorite NPC is held captive, rope-climbing the brutalist walls and watchtowers, guarded by… well, you name it!