The day I heard the Legion announcement, I got to work right away on some terrain. It was hard to choose one particular planet, but I finally settled on Endor mostly because I loved the way it was shown at the demo. However, I didn't want to go out and buy a bunch of trees, so I found some great way to make my own. I did a rough cost total and I came up with under $50 for everything you see, and I still have a ton of supplies left over! If you use cardboard for the bases and already have some glue, you can do this project for about $30. I have to get to work, so I'll go back later and find a realistic total cost.
First, the big trees were made using this exact youtube tutorial. It was super cheap and turned out great! It cost me about $5 in hot glue and about $4 in Elmer's glue (I found a ton of glue on sale for 25 cents so I picked up a couple fistfulls. The "kids" glue works but the regular stuff is better)
For the "pine" trees I used this tutorial which was awesome and cheap. A cocoa nut husk liners cost me less than $2 at Lowe's. Everywhere else they were like $8 for the same thing! I had to buy a $10 spray on glue that in the end was worth it to allow the flock and cocoa nut rings to stick on the 4$ set of dowels. Also, miniwargaming did a great tutorial on how to make your own flock for less than a dollar or two: https://www.miniwargaming.com/content/nHhRAibLVkcD . I made two big batches of light and dark flock using their method of sawdust, cheap paint, and water. If you use too much water the flock turns out dull brown/greenish.
For the dark trees, I had to get creative, I wanted to mimic the trees I saw in the FFG demo. I shaved the sides of some dowels and gave them pointy tips. I then found a couple of packages of moss from Walmart that totaled to about $10. I got three packs. I'm having a hard time finding an exact link, but the moss was from Pfoflora titled "Reindeer Moss Forest." This is the only moss I've found that isn't all dried out and fragile. Anyway I soaked and I mean SOAKED these bunches of moss in water and Elmer's glue and then repeated the process once dried. I sprayed them with some dark green (they were already dark green) and then sprayed them with a highlight light green paint. The result is some very durable, bendable, but unbreakable moss clumps that I skewered on the dowels and then glued in place. Any breaks in the moss was easily fixed with hot glue. These trees, like the "pine" trees were hot glued into the bases.
I got some ideas for the bases from this video: Bases Video . I finally settled on a $6 board of MDF because it was really durable and more importantly heavy. My goal with this terrain is to find a blend between "realistic" and durable. The MDF prevents hands from bumping and knocking over everything. I sanded down the edges too.
I next coated the bases in $4 Spackle. Once dried, I made a big mixed blob of kids elmer's glue (it was cheaper), free sand from a construction site, and sawdust.
After drying, I painted the entire base cheap brown. For a second and third coat have to wet down the paint and brush it into the holes in the sawdust/sand mixture or else little white holes of unpainted Spackle with show through. I then mixed 50/50 brown and burnt orange paint for a second layer. Lastly, I applied the some glue and added the sawdust flock. If you don't know already, Woodland Scenics makes some AMAZING formulated scenic cement glue that you can apply once dry. The "wet" glue soaks into the flock and later dries as hard as a rock. Afer all the glue dried, I highlighted the dark flock with some light green.
Lastly, I got lucky and found some plastic decorating plants 50% off at Michaels. I cut them down, clumped them together, and glued them into holes I made in the bases.
Final product
I made this post quick before work, so I haven't proof read. I'll get back to any questions you might have. I'd be happy to share everything I know!
Edited by JBar