A test Sci-Fi building and some speedster markers

The past week has been a busy week with non-wargaming commitments, so I have not been able to sit down and write a blog post until now. However, I did manage to make some progress on the Star Wars project and made a test building and some quick-and-easy markers for my speedster units. The test building is made using old bits of wood and dowel I had lying around, and turned out to be a fun bit of recycling.

My first test building for my Star War Legion project.

Terrain always seems to take up so much space, and due to space constraints, I store most of my terrain in large plastic tubs which I can stack. So the buildings I make need to be robust with no fragile details that could easily break off. This has meant I now mostly build everything from wood with minimal detailing. Where details like windows or doors are needed, I will usually paint them on. I also paint in shadows to highlight a building’s features and to added colour. For this particular building, I used a purple wash to emphasise the angles and add some depth to the windows.

My painting style is loose and I do not worry too much about precision. I do use dry brushing to breakup large blocks of colour and I will often suggest details with just a dash of paint. It is a quick approach that works well for the tabletop, just do not look too closely!

Doors and windows are painted on and a purple wash has been used to emphasise features and shadows.

I also painted up an old downlight, which works well as a standalone piece of machinery used as scatter terrain, or can be placed on top of the building to make it look a bit more interesting.

An old downlighting gets recycled as scatter terrain for the tabletop.

Alternatively, the downlight can be placed on top of the building to make it look more industrial.

I also made some markers for my speedster units as reminders. With the rules I am using, speedster units must make a half move each turn, whether they are activated or not during a turn. The markers are placed to show units have made their mandatory half move.

Speedster units marked to show they have made their mandatory half move.

The markers are made from soft toy filler, I picked up a bag of it from a craft store a while back. It has proven to be really useful stuff for creating smoke effects and marking musket fire. For the speedster markers, I dipped the toy filler into watered-down brown paint to add a sand looking colour. It took a few goes of dipping to achieve the right colour depth, which made the process a bit time consuming due to the drying time between dippings.

Another speedster unit move across the tabletop.

While I have been working on all the painting and modelling, I have been planning and sketching out in my head a small six-game skirmish campaign where I can make use of my recently completed Star Wars Legion figures.