This, as indicated by the Part 2, is a follow-up of the posting last week where I discussed some painting approaches we have taken to quickly complete the necessary painting of the 2 No. Star Wars Legion Base Sets the Little One got for Christmas, so we could get it on a table and play it.  It is worth checking out that blog post here.

Today we will cover:

• Some Tatooine like buildings we got through Ebay
• Approach to basing and terrain mats
• The barricades
• Storing the stuff in the Base Box

Tatooine Buildings

Last time I showed some Tatooine style of buildings we ordered from e-bay, they arrived last week and looked great. Being 3D printed they had some layers visible, but not too much to upset us.

We added some Vallejo mud paste on the models here and there to add some further interest. It was then primed with black gesso.

Then from left to right, heavy drybrush with the buffy colour (let dry), then a wash with sepia ink (diluted with water say 1/2 ink/water), then drybrush with the lighter colour.

We then detailed some part with a drybrush of saddle brown followed by a leather red (Vallejo), whilst other parts in metallic bronze. I then washed these details with a rust wash.  The moisture collectors were painted like the barricades below.  We think it is good enough for the table.

I have bought another two buildings from the same seller at eBay (3dwgprinted), and will paint them in the same style once they arrive (this should give us a good start with some terrain).

 

Some thoughts on Terrain for Star Wars Legion

One of the cool things with Star Wars are the different environments where the action could take place.  It could be a fight on Tatooine in a desert environment, in a forest like Endor, snow like Hoth, or in space ship (like the opening scene from a New Hope) or a base.  This, to us, is one of the many fascinating aspects of a sci-fi fantasy world.  The bases the game comes with are dark grey for the Imperials and Burgundy red for the Rebels, they are 3mm thick (see picture below).

Here are ours by the way.

 

We could have left them like this or put some texture on them, but what? – Space based flooring, desert sand, forest, snow? Instead we decided to go for Clear Acrylic bases, and got them from here https://justlasered.co.uk/shop/star-wars-legion-clear-bases/ .

Incidentally they do some other cool stuff, worth checking out (these are in 28mm scale).

Sorry, back to the bases.

This is how the bases turned out and how they look on a gaming surface (based on a sneaky little skirmish we had over the weekend using the Little Ones “Alcoholic-Free Beers and Pretzel Rules”).  I think the bases works well.

We have ordered a 6 by 3 desert mat after shopping around a little bit – it looks like this.

It looks good and will also be useful for some of my Mahdist war stuff I was working on last year as well.  However the piece of fabric we used to take the pictures above I have to admit looks smashing too.

This was a piece of fabric bought from ebay. It sells in 1/2 meter lengths and is about 1 metre wide, so you would need to buy 2 No. for a 3 by 3 mat (total cost of £13) and 4 No. for a 6 by 3 mat (total cost of £26). It is shown in the screen shot below.

The things is that there are many different colour schemes of this pattern/style which would give you the ability to get a few different options for the look of your table.

 

I have only bought the one shown in the pictures above (so not sure how the other patterns would look on the table). Also remember that these are pieces of fabric, not comparable with the quality of the wargames mats in cloth or other materials you can buy commercially, they also come in a 1 metre width (that is 3 ¼ feet so will not do your normal 4 feet width) – but perhaps worth considering to give some variety.  It is hard to beat £13 for a 3 by 3 mat.   I might have ordered one or two more varieties and will report back once they arrive.

Barricades

There are some barricades that comes with the game – we are yet to figure out how these would work in practice! I suppose they are included as a substitute for other terrain, but I always find them funny especially if both sides are using them.  It is a little bit like some kind of paintball range where the opponents meet up instead of a more believable skirmish in a more improvised location, or where only one side has set up defences.  However perhaps I am overthinking this.

We base coated these with black gesso and then dry brushed them with a medium grey followed by a very light grey. We then used a pale grey wash over them (we used the Vallejo Pale Grey Wash).

Storage in the Base Box

We cut a few pieces of 3mm foamboard we had lying around to allow us more efficiently utilise one of the Legion Boxes for storing the miniatures (all the other stuff fits in one of the two boxes).  This is how they were cut (all the same length as one side of the box). Making sure the walker would fit as shown.

Then inserted in the box.

We then cut another piece on top to be able to store more soldiers, and added a handle to be able to lift it up easily – we used an old little toy model cat.

Perfect (not for travelling around with, but enough for us to gently put back into storage).

Plenty of space to fit those speeder bikes when done, and further expansions.

But that cat does look scared, with all those rebels around! / Hope that was of some interest!