Like me – and indeed science fiction in general – Star Wars loves starship graveyards. Rusty, looted carcasses of miles long star destroyers make for haunting, exciting backdrops – remember all those magnificent wide shots in the first 30 minutes of Episode VII: The Force Awakens? The moment I saw those scenes, I wanted a tabletop setup like that for Star Wars Legion (and honestly other wargames too). Now, this new Kickstarter for 3D printable terrain offers the best option I’ve seen so far.
Official releases for Star Wars Legion are in a bit of a lull at the moment: new players are well advised to wait for the good value new starter sets coming this Fall, while existing players have no choice but to wait for the reissues of old kits that are scheduled to appear on the Star Wars Legion roadmap over the next couple of years. It’s a time to clear your painting backlog – or build that dream scenery set you’ve always wanted!
There are quite a few third party Star Wars Legion terrain sets that look like ruined space ships, and plenty of ‘space dungeon’ tile systems out there for building space ship interiors, but the ‘Scrap Hunting’ scenery set by TellUsWargames is the first I’ve seen that successfully blends the two.
This modular system has one crucial difference from other similar kits: angled supporting walls which let you cant the floors of the wreck at an angle. Just that little change, and the transitional floor tiles which appear to be buried under displaced sand, really sell the fantasy that this terrain is just broken pieces of something much larger that is now mostly buried under the sands of the desert.
TellUsWargames seems to be a proper mom-and-pop outfit, as the very home-made trailer video above demonstrates. The Kickstarter for Scrap Hunting runs until 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10 PM BST on Saturday July 5, and it costs $38 (£29) to get the full core set plus any stretch goals. The models will be supplied as STLs so you’ll need access to an FDM 3D printer to actually make the models.
We haven’t tested the set, so we can’t confirm how well it prints – we also haven’t checked if the angle the floors are pitched at is so steep that models are at risk of sliding. They should be fine, as the slope is 10°. That’s less than the magic 15° number that master hobbyist Uncle Eric identified in his great video on building wargaming hills:
The set would work really well in several other games: as sections of ruined hive dome in Necromunda, a bomb blasted Vault in Fallout: Factions, or just a new addition to your Warhammer 40k terrain collection.
But when I saw the giant breached reactor, my immediate thought was of the amazing landscape of fallen Star Destroyers at the start of The Force Awakens – a thought that was immediately displaced by a memory of Unkar Plutt rumbling “One quarter portion” from his giant unsettling face.
Have you seen an even better ruined space ship scenery set? Have you created something like this yourself by mounting some other scenery at an angle? We’d love to hear about it in the official Wargamer Discord community!
Given how many of the best board games are themed around picking stuff up and delivering it, I’m disappointed that there isn’t a Star Wars board game about racing through the spaceship ruins on Jakku in search of loot… but a nerd can dream.
Source: Wargamer
