My nephews are super excited about Legion and I was hoping to surprise them with a 6x3 modular Tatooine for when the game comes out. I've had some experience building model train sets and also am good at woodworking so I figured this technically shouldn't be THAT difficult. I am completely new to tabletop gaming though and only heard about it from my brother when Legion was unveiled. I have watched a few Bolt Action videos online which showed how the mechanics work for this type of game but still have some questions. My plan it to place everything on bases so that the table can be rearranged and create different "maps."

(My main concern is that I will spend a bunch of time on this project and it will turn into a glorified diorama instead of a functioning game board my nephews can play on.)

They mentioned "jump height" in the demo. Should I make a board that has different heights to it? ie cliffs, rooftops, catwalks, etc.

Cover seems to play a role. Should I expect that the barricades will come with the game? Or make my own crates, half walls, junk piles, etc?

Or should I just wait until the rules are announced for the game so that I can get all the particulars. I'm not familiar with FF and whether or not they will even release this information before the actual game comes out. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I feel like I should start on this ASAP! I shot for photorealism with my train sets and plan on going all out since I'm a huge Star Wars nerd!

Any info would help. Thanks

3 hours ago, Hidatom said:

35mm = 1:48 scale = O scale

https://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=o+scale+trees&oq=o+scale+trees&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0.14333.15248.0.15570.5.5.0.0.0.0.146.679.0j5.5.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.5.678...0i30k1j0i24k1.hyDwjTD6eZU

This is from another thread, for scale.

As far as the rest of it goes it might be a good idea to wait until we know more about the movement templates' lengths as vehicles will have to move along them.

2 hours ago, Tracer4444 said:

(My main concern is that I will spend a bunch of time on this project and it will turn into a glorified diorama instead of a functioning game board my nephews can play on.)

A wise concern. The thing to bear in mind as you proceed is the terrain needs to function within the game, not just look pretty.

When you design, always keep the pieces function in mind. LOS interfering cover, LOS blocking cover, LOS and Movement blocking cover, and non-los blocking impassible.

A single palm tree is just a decorative element. Two palms a few inches apart with some tall grass between form a nice pair of "goal posts" denoting an area of cover.

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They mentioned "jump height" in the demo. Should I make a board that has different heights to it? ie cliffs, rooftops, catwalks, etc.

"Jumping" allows a unit, using the force, jetpacks, or repulsor engines, to ignore "height 1" terrain when moving. People are fixating on the idea of Luke hopping onto a roof, but I suspect more practical usage will be more about ignoring movement penalizing or prohibiting terrain. So while you can make multilevel terrain, a simple impassible river would be a safer build at this stage (and also be a good excuse to make a bridge or two).

The exact details of this and non-fancy units climbing multilevel terrain has yet to be released. So probably better to hold off before making anything too complex.

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Cover seems to play a role. Should I expect that the barricades will come with the game? Or make my own crates, half walls, junk piles, etc?

Yes to both. The barricades are included, but you're going to want more.

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Or should I just wait until the rules are announced for the game so that I can get all the particulars.

Your call. My advice: go ahead and make a modular basic table now, with just normal reasonable agnostic terrain and elements. Rocks, trees, hills, ponds, rivers and such aren't going to need much additional elaboration and the rules should account for them with not a lot of complexity or object specific special rules. Once the game comes out you can expand, adding fancier terrain that really leverages the special rules, like your multilevel ewok village and such.

A couple of things are a given, if you wanted to make a start.

1) The board size is 6'x3', though it's worth considering having a 6'x4' and keeping the extra 6" on each side delineated and clear for keeping reference cards, tokens, casualties, etc.

Three main options for the board are; flat, with light texture and/or flock. This means you can have separate terrain features ('scatter' terrain) that they can move around to keep the board different, easier to store and transport, but won't look as good as your train sets probably do. OR you can go the other extreme and have a fully modelled board, with contours built in. This could have some flat areas to enable different scatter terrain pieces to be used, or you can go the whole hog with built in buildings, obstacles and such. OR the middle path is the 'modular' terrain board. Usually made up of 1'x1' or 2'x2' blocks, 6'x3' is obviously a bit awkward for 2' squares, though! If you're clever about how you make them, you can have several different configurations, or make more than you need (or extras later) to enable swapping in and out. The last two options would also enable dried river beds, or trenches, but beware doing too much of that, as you risk one side of the board having a major advantage in cover, unless you stick them everywhere, which might get in the way of playing. The riskiness of having something that either gets boring to play across, or difficult to play on is inversely proportional to how cool it looks, unfortunately. If they have the space for it, the modular option is the best compromise, but is also the most difficult to achieve. I genuinely think the more boring flat board with a good selection of scatter terrain is the most gaming-friendly, however.

2) Hills, be wary of super naturalistic contours on a gaming board. The figures have to be able to stand where you want to put them, so unless you're putting in very gradual slopes there will be a lot of figures falling over and knocking into each other. Most wargaming terrain goes for stepped hills, which don't look as realistic, but have flat areas at differing heights to enable figures to stay where they're put. Have a play with anything similar sized, but bear in mind some of the poses may lead to figures being somewhat top heavy.

3) Buildings, are definitely something you could get cracking with straight away. If you're planning on sticking them straight onto a modular board, having them free standing, or on their own little base (this helps make them a touch more durable, and looks less odd when put on a similarly painted board as there won't be any gaps at the foot of the building), you can get started straight away if you're wary about jumping straight into making a board without seeing the figures. If you make doors about 35mm tall and scale everything else from there, you shouldn't go far wrong, but there are already a few tutorial videos (including in these forums) that should give you an idea of size. Massive buildings look impressive, but unless they're in ruins it can turn into just so much dead space for the game. You could have removable roofs with modelled interiors, but that's a whole lot more work, and is often too fiddly to play around with in the middle of a game. Plus line of sight can be really tricky to determine, unless there are going to be rules for models occupying buildings, which we just don't know about currently. As the rules seem fairly streamlined from what we've seen, I doubt they'll bother, but they certainly didn't have interactive buildings like that on their demo boards.

4) Trees? If you're planning a Tatooine board, I guess you won't need them! But if you do, either have a piece of baseboard which shows the footprint of the wooded area, then a few trees inside to make it look nice. Some like removable trees to enable models to move through easier. The infantry shouldn't be a problem at all, but if they release larger vehicles or monsters having trees glued down to the board might be a hindrance. Either will work, it's like a microcosm of the modular board question, up to you.

5) Obstacles, again can be free standing or on bases, I think bases look nicer, personally. Doesn't need to be massive, just 1/3 to 1/2 an inch around the obstacle, unless the base is likely to be quite deep, in which case have a 1.5" border so that a figure base can sit comfortably on it. We don't know much about terrain, but we know that to shoot over an obstacle unhindered, you have to be in base contact with it. If the base isn't so deep that it stops that, do what looks best.

6) Levels, you mentioned this and I think it's worth highlighting. In a skirmish game like this, having differing heights, walkways, platforms, towers, etc can make for really interesting games. Anything that turns line of sight into something other than just 2D angles makes for a great game. Don't have loads of interconnected, multi-level platforms crossing over each other, else they'll get in the way. Remember, they'll be moving figures in and out of almost anywhere you can think of. If you've built Spaghetti Junction it'll get messy fast!

That turned into a longer post than I was expecting... Hope it's useful, and share some pics if you decide to take the plunge!

Thanks for the responses guys. For sure enough to get started. I'll post pictures once I get some work done. My wife is gonna HATE this game!

you might also want to make the board "modular" so that you could turn it into Jedha City.
This just would mean that some terrain features and buildings would be removable.
you will see plenty of modular terrain on this board.

or even Jakku

4 hours ago, General Zodd said:

A couple of things are a given, if you wanted to make a start.

1) The board size is 6'x3', though it's worth considering having a 6'x4' and keeping the extra 6" on each side delineated and clear for keeping reference cards, tokens, casualties, etc.

Three main options for the board are; flat, with light texture and/or flock. This means you can have separate terrain features ('scatter' terrain) that they can move around to keep the board different, easier to store and transport, but won't look as good as your train sets probably do. OR you can go the other extreme and have a fully modelled board, with contours built in. This could have some flat areas to enable different scatter terrain pieces to be used, or you can go the whole hog with built in buildings, obstacles and such. OR the middle path is the 'modular' terrain board. Usually made up of 1'x1' or 2'x2' blocks, 6'x3' is obviously a bit awkward for 2' squares, though! If you're clever about how you make them, you can have several different configurations, or make more than you need (or extras later) to enable swapping in and out. The last two options would also enable dried river beds, or trenches, but beware doing too much of that, as you risk one side of the board having a major advantage in cover, unless you stick them everywhere, which might get in the way of playing. The riskiness of having something that either gets boring to play across, or difficult to play on is inversely proportional to how cool it looks, unfortunately. If they have the space for it, the modular option is the best compromise, but is also the most difficult to achieve. I genuinely think the more boring flat board with a good selection of scatter terrain is the most gaming-friendly, however.

2) Hills, be wary of super naturalistic contours on a gaming board. The figures have to be able to stand where you want to put them, so unless you're putting in very gradual slopes there will be a lot of figures falling over and knocking into each other. Most wargaming terrain goes for stepped hills, which don't look as realistic, but have flat areas at differing heights to enable figures to stay where they're put. Have a play with anything similar sized, but bear in mind some of the poses may lead to figures being somewhat top heavy.

3) Buildings, are definitely something you could get cracking with straight away. If you're planning on sticking them straight onto a modular board, having them free standing, or on their own little base (this helps make them a touch more durable, and looks less odd when put on a similarly painted board as there won't be any gaps at the foot of the building), you can get started straight away if you're wary about jumping straight into making a board without seeing the figures. If you make doors about 35mm tall and scale everything else from there, you shouldn't go far wrong, but there are already a few tutorial videos (including in these forums) that should give you an idea of size. Massive buildings look impressive, but unless they're in ruins it can turn into just so much dead space for the game. You could have removable roofs with modelled interiors, but that's a whole lot more work, and is often too fiddly to play around with in the middle of a game. Plus line of sight can be really tricky to determine, unless there are going to be rules for models occupying buildings, which we just don't know about currently. As the rules seem fairly streamlined from what we've seen, I doubt they'll bother, but they certainly didn't have interactive buildings like that on their demo boards.

4) Trees? If you're planning a Tatooine board, I guess you won't need them! But if you do, either have a piece of baseboard which shows the footprint of the wooded area, then a few trees inside to make it look nice. Some like removable trees to enable models to move through easier. The infantry shouldn't be a problem at all, but if they release larger vehicles or monsters having trees glued down to the board might be a hindrance. Either will work, it's like a microcosm of the modular board question, up to you.

5) Obstacles, again can be free standing or on bases, I think bases look nicer, personally. Doesn't need to be massive, just 1/3 to 1/2 an inch around the obstacle, unless the base is likely to be quite deep, in which case have a 1.5" border so that a figure base can sit comfortably on it. We don't know much about terrain, but we know that to shoot over an obstacle unhindered, you have to be in base contact with it. If the base isn't so deep that it stops that, do what looks best.

6) Levels, you mentioned this and I think it's worth highlighting. In a skirmish game like this, having differing heights, walkways, platforms, towers, etc can make for really interesting games. Anything that turns line of sight into something other than just 2D angles makes for a great game. Don't have loads of interconnected, multi-level platforms crossing over each other, else they'll get in the way. Remember, they'll be moving figures in and out of almost anywhere you can think of. If you've built Spaghetti Junction it'll get messy fast!

That turned into a longer post than I was expecting... Hope it's useful, and share some pics if you decide to take the plunge!

I am going to quote this post in a lot of threads. Well done.

5 hours ago, General Zodd said:

2) Hills, be wary of super naturalistic contours on a gaming board. The figures have to be able to stand where you want to put them, so unless you're putting in very gradual slopes there will be a lot of figures falling over and knocking into each other. Most wargaming terrain goes for stepped hills, which don't look as realistic, but have flat areas at differing heights to enable figures to stay where they're put.

I agree that stepped hills are more practical, though I'm a little concerned in relation to this game specifically. The "Clambering rules" mentioned in one of the demo videos, but not actually practiced might become a thing in relation to some players simply being confused as to if they need to use them or not in relation to the hills.

Going to muck with this a little more once I've got product in hand, just wanted to get the conversation going now...

22 hours ago, Hidatom said:

you might also want to make the board "modular" so that you could turn it into Jedha City.
This just would mean that some terrain features and buildings would be removable.
you will see plenty of modular terrain on this board.

My plan was to take a little of Jedda, Jakku, and Tatooine to make a generic "desert themed" board.

I'm going to hop into this game, as my first Miniatures game (outside of buying a small amount of X-Wing). The terrain tips in here were very helpful!