If you were wowed two weeks ago by the trailer for Atomic Mass Games’ new miniature wargame Star Wars Shatterpoint, you may have wondered where they got their stunning scenery from. The lovely desert scene seen in the trailer is unmistakably Star Wars, and would fit right in on Tatooine or Jakku.
It was built by hobbyist Rob Hawkins on commission, and completed back in April of 2021. Now finally able to talk about it, Hawkins has shared in depth details on the construction process, through a series of blog posts detailing the making of the board, the shipwrecks, and – this one’s yet to be published – the buildings.
According to Hawkins, the rocky background of the scene was built from polystyrene insulation foam, smoothed over with Elmer’s Wood Filler putty. The sand is… well, sand, and the big central wreck was constructed from pieces of moisture vaporiser from past Star Wars builds, as well as a bunch of “styrene rods, tubes, I-beams, and metal floral wire”, for the details.
The spaceship ruins are perhaps the most striking part of Hawkins’ Star Wars build, though they were designed “to fit in the background, popping up over the dunes outside the town”. As Hawkins blogs, they were created from a wide range of materials, such as a toy plastic microphone, and bits of PVC pipe. Hawkins made copious use of “random off-cuts left over from other projects” – he recommends his readers should “never throw anything away!”
According to the hobbyist, this Star Wars Shatterpoint trailer build was made without a particular hot destination in mind. “The setting is supposed to be generic enough so it can pass for any Outer Rim desert planet”.
Hawkins has done work for Atomic Mass Games in the past – producing scenery for one of the best Marvel board games, Marvel Crisis Protocol. If you want to take your first steps on the road to creating this kind of fabulous scenery, you’ll likely need our guide to painting miniatures.
Source: Wargamer
