Months after my first post about it, and almost a year after its original conception, I finally have something to show for myself. I'm really excited to finally get this on the table this coming Wednesday. Here's what I did with my long weekend...

Bases and Posts

Bases: 1/4" acrylic sheet with adhesive paper. Cardboard tokens were traced onto the paper, and the pieces were cut out on a scroll saw.

Posts: 1/8" acrylic rods and 1/16" acrylic rods . Drilled a hole in the base (be careful to drill steadily, or else the hole will be too loose of a fit). 1/8" for the post and 1/16" for the branching pieces.

Asteroids

Lava rocks from Home Depot, with a few different shades of color added. You could do a stony gray, black, brown, lunar white, or martian red. I went with a dirty brown color, first spray priming them black for the recesses and then dry brushing brown over the high spots. You could also spray them your highlight color and roll them in dark wash, but I think having the color contrast helps them look cratered.

Here's the finished product, minus one that wasn't quite done drying yet.

And the final set.

You're not going into an asteroid field?

They'd be crazy to follow us!

Dust Fields

Polyester stuffing, spray painted black and then touched up with splotches of paint. I tried a few colors. Orange and peachy-tan were alright, purple (Citadel Genestealer Purple) was better, and gold (Citadel Gehenna's Gold) was the best. A 1/16" acrylic rod went through to give structure and an attachment point for the post.

If you come around the corner of a dust field without looking both ways, you're gonna have a bad time.

Stations

The stations were actually the easiest part of the project. I had a "Federation Spacedock" from a set of 90s Micro Machines, and I bought another one to make two stations for the campaign and new objectives. One got a red paintjob to distinguish the two, and both got a little bit of touching up, though I may revisit the painting.

One station, two stations, red station, blue station.

A little staged action shot.

Debris Fields

I bought some miniatures from the old Starship Battles game by Wizards of the Coast. They were approximately in scale with Armada, and hopefully their destruction covers up any discrepancies. I used my drill and a nail heated over a candle to carve them apart, but a real hot knife or a minis saw would be better. I added some more wear by scorching them over the candle flame, and added some orange highlights to the exploded-open wounds.

I used the same methods as the dust fields to do the billowing smoke and flames, but I'm actually going back and forth on whether I like them more without the smoke. In fact, there's a lot of details that are hard to see with how busy they are right now. I made one more set of debris as a "TIE fighter graveyard." The TIEs are rejects from the many extras I have, one was actually broken from the beginning. They were carved apart and burned over the candle. That hull piece was unsurprisingly cut off from one of the exploded transports, and the smashed-up satellite is for the final phase of my project (stay tuned).

The Devastator jumps into Scarif orbit. "Lord Vader will handle the fleet."

A little Rebel payback...

These are awesome. I love the dust cloud.

I will copycat your dust fields. Great work! Now I need to find where I get this acrylic stuffing stuff.

great work man. scenery really does add to the table. I love the burning nebulon

Brilliant stuff! I started making asteroid fields a while back, but couldn't figure out how to cut the Acrylic bases to size.

Thanks all. It took a lot to figure this all out, but maybe building off my efforts or being more experienced at making tabletop terrain you could manage more easily. As it is, this probably cost me as much to do as it would to buy someone's secondhand Space Rocks. Again, though, it would probably save a lot of time and money if I were to do it again and avoid my early failures.

I know the degree to which aesthetics matter for your game is a question of personal taste, but anyone in the Painting and Modification subforum who's taken the time to repaint a ship or two should really give their game the upgrade from cardboard that it deserves. I'm shocked that there isn't more stuff like this out there.

I will copycat your dust fields. Great work! Now I need to find where I get this acrylic stuffing stuff.

For the dust fields, I got the stuffing at a craft store. Any craft store like Michael's or JoAnn Fabric should have it. In round one I bought some cotton fluff of the type used in little Christmas villages, but it wasn't quite right. You want polyester stuffing like would be used for quilts, upholstery, or stuffed animals.

Brilliant stuff! I started making asteroid fields a while back, but couldn't figure out how to cut the Acrylic bases to size.

The acrylic bases are probably the trickiest part of you don't have access to the kind of saw that I used. You could try casting the cardboard pieces in resin. I've never tried that, but people say it's not hard to learn, and these are simple pieces for that technique since they're flat on top and bottom.

Brilliant stuff! I started making asteroid fields a while back, but couldn't figure out how to cut the Acrylic bases to size.

I used balsa, easy to cut / sand and look fine once sprayed black

Again thanks! This helps!

These are exceptional, especially your very clever dust clouds. The Star Trek micromachine stations also work incredibly well, and I think I prefer them to the standard shapeway options.

The dust clouds I'm most pleased with, which is good because when I saw it with just orange and purple they looked kinda blah. Gold really upped the look.