Collins Does Scarif Table Build

And all battles need a plan.

This entry I hope to document some research and outline my plan going forward for this build.

Scarif is the name of the planet in Rogue One where the Empire keeps it’s off site digital backup. It’s a small idilic world that houses a big spire full of porn, several small outposts and landing pads that you can holiday to if your papers are in order and is only subjected to the occasional raid by the rebellion.

Although I feel that’s a good description more accurate fluff can be found on wookieepedia

In actuality the filmset for Scarif was the Maldives which is (I’m told) a wonderful place to drink cocktails. Knowing this however gives us an excellent frame of reference. White sandy beaches, palm trees, luscious tropical foresty bits!

Now for some snaps I have shamelessly stolen from the internet!

So lets start with the board.

At my FLGS they have moved away from having ‘wargaming’ tables that are sculpted and cool looking. They’re not very multifunctional and to be honest they’re biggest trade there is collectible card games and roleplaying. The wargamers are not the biggest draw but usually take up the most space.

In a bit to keep all peoples happy they have bought a lot of DeepCutStudios mats and started keeping ‘tables’ of terrain in boxes. It works well.

So in that vein of convenience lets see what mats are available out there that are suitable for this.

So far, nothing that looks like the Maldives!

sure a couple of them are beachy but not exactly white sandy paradise!

So having decided that the previous mats are not suitable I broadened my search to pworks and tinywargames

I’ve seen both these products at shows and at friends houses and they are good. tinywargames are the only ones I know of so far that do mats just for Star Wars Legion. a Hoth, Tattooine and hanger and then generic grass.

I then saw a post on Facebook from somebody who had been designing up a couple of Star Wars legion mats. Apparently they also were becoming frustrated with the lack of ‘just right’ for Scarif and so they made their own and have put it up for sale on wargamevault.com

we what do we have here? is it a winner, I think so! very Maldives!

I’m one of those lucky DINKies with an excess of disposable income and about a year ago I bought a Prusa i3Mk3 printer. I have found my journey into 3D printing to be a much smoother ride than Warren but then that is to be expected as the machine I bought from Prusa is far more expensive and reliable. That doesn’t mean that its been perfect though. I still have been frustrated, annoyed and used naughty words on occasion. Thankfully it’s been more positive than negative. Theres a lot to be said for ‘get what you pay for’ and ‘buy right, buy once’.

Thingiverse is a gold mine for cool Star Wars stuff and there is tonnes of scatter terrain like crates, bunkers, guns, vehicles. Some better than others, some very very naff. It is a real lottery, I just kept searching until I found users who are clearly skilled. There is also a few people on there who remix other peoples work, change one thing and publish it as theirs (with credits – usually) that don’t actually add any real value to the overall community. Also, I found that a lot of people model things and then don’t actually do a print test which means there models are generally very hard to work with as a novice.

Then there are other people who take it more seriously who have left thingiverse and started their own websites/services who’s models are excellent and easy to print. a lot more thought goes into these models than the stuff on thingiverse. ImperialTerrain being such a company.

With all that said, I will clearly be printing some items for this table. Some people would call this cheating, I call it smart. The hobby has had an evolution. Calligraphy is out and email is in!

There are still some items that cannot be 3D printed however. hills, palm trees and vegetation are all either hard to print or would be a waste of time/material. quicker and cheaper to use traditional methods.

The tree sections will be done using traditional methods. time to research exactly how to do it!

To YouTube!!

There are a lot of people on YouTube who are truly craftsmen (or women, people?) and I have lost many many hours of my life watching their content (a bit like those numptys OnTableTop).

The two people who I have taken inspiration from for this project are The Terrain Tutor and Lukes APS. Both of these are different and yet remarkably similar. They both strive for realism and excellent quality but I feel that Luke’s methods are much quicker than Mel’s detailed traditional methods. Both are well worth a watch and I shall be shamelessly ripping them both off equally in this project log.

I used a lot of Mel’s ideas for my Yavin IV table build and will do so again because I still have some materials left over from that, herbs, mdf, plastic plants etc. It is hoped that this can keep the cost down as I will invariably have to buy that awesome mat we found!

As you can see from the videos above. Luke’s methodology is quick, simple but still gives excellent results. Mel really does go to town on his (personal) project and the results are amazing. I just don’t want to go to that level really. I plan to land squarely in the middle.

Use Luke’s grout method and then half of Mel’s ground cover methods.

Now, to the workstation!

I will be making some palm forest sections for this board. One of the things I found out from the Yavin IV build is that it was very easy to make the forest impenetrable so every tree/hedge becomes LOS and movement blocking. Need to avoid that here even though the reference pictures show the actuality to be very dense. Good news, that means less materials per item, keeping costs down or allowing for more terrain.

Effective what I did was to cut out the bases of MDF using a jigsaw, then sand the sides to a bevel using the Dremel. This was quite time consuming. I did 7 bases in an hour and I got covered in MDF dust. I did wear googles and a mask and so should you!

I then sealed the bottom of the bases using a cheap wilkos house emulsion paint in an appropriate colour like hessian.

once dry I flipped them over and wetted with water. Then I slapped on a few lumps of DAS clay and smoothed out into mini hills. You wet the MDF first so the clay sticks better and drys more evenly. If you don’t, you’ll find the clay will pull away from the MDF on drying.

Once that was dry I slapped on some sculptamold so to build in some texture. perhaps this can be skipped but I felt it would help keep the clay down a bit and add minor texture to the otherwise flat areas of the MDF.

Once dry the whole lot got painted using the hessian house paint.

Including drying times (in the English sun) this took about a day to achieve. The clay was the biggest time waster here. polystyrene or high density foam would have been much quicker, I just didn’t have any!

Once at this stage I basically followed Luke’s video with some minor tweaks.

I tea strainered the grout over the bases and hit it with a misting of 99% isopropyl and then a watered PVA spray. I found old window cleaning spray bottles to be excellent for this. raid the cleaning cupboards people!

Once the tile grout was dry it was predictably, rock hard. I am hoping that this makes it super durable and will help with the next stages.

Using neat PVA I put down my tree debris areas on the bases. Theses were concentrated on top of the hill areas so to accommodate the drilling for the pegs of the trees.

Once PVA was where I wanted, I dumped a load of mixed herbs on it. This came from a catering pack from The Range for like £2. Cheap and simple. Once on I pushed hard on them to make sure they made a good bond with the PVA and grout.

Then after that had dried, for some reason I decided to spray it again with watered PVA. I’m sure I had a good reason, I just cannot remember why. Possibly to minimise the herb smell. This had an unforeseen side effect. It leached the green of the herbs onto the grout. I kitchen towelled most of this up and now only a little remains around it, im now claiming that it was a good idea and I totally planned it as it makes the sand look a little more interesting and stained from a storm knocking about debris and stuff. Yup, not a cock up, a deliberate artistic choice!