I’m very excited to share my BIG X-wing miniatures game project with you!
This post is image-heavy and has a bunch of gif animations...wait for it to load, I promise it will be worth it!
From the day I opened my first X-wing miniatures box and put those amazing little Star Wars ships on the tabletop, I’ve loved the game...but what could make it even better, I thought? Flying down a Death Star Trench!
I’ve worked on this project over 2+ years, working carefully on building each 3D model. It’s grown into a fairly large layout!
I’ve built super high detail into every piece of the model
Some searching revealed some photos of the original film Death Star Trench model! I love film special effects, and as much as I love quality modern CGI effects, there’s a special place in my heart for old-school practical effects, especially miniature models! I imagine it must have been so much fun to design and assemble the phenomenally detailed original trench models...in a smaller-scale way, I’m trying to re-create the intricate, tactile experience of building the Death Star Trench
original film trench model
my trench model
The original Death Star detail models were of course the starting point for building my 3D models, though of course I made some optimizations for the models to work as miniatures game terrain
original film Death Star surface model
my surface terrain models
I’m really happy with how I was able to pull the design from this great original wall detail model into my model:
original film wall detail
my wall model
And of course, I extrapolated from there and went on to create a bunch of my own original models, creating a large variety of designs.
No Death Star surface would be complete without it’s turbolaser turrets, right?
Then I wanted to take those turrets to the next level, so I modeled this modular base structure:
with a turbolaser turret on top of this base structure, it looks pretty imposing:
Though that doesn’t mean that those nimble Rebel X-wings can’t outmaneuver and evade them!
I absolutely love the Battle Of Yavin. It’s probably my favorite film sequence. It’s just so much fun to recreate it on the tabletop, from flying an X-wing down the trench
To having the Millennium Falcon pursue that tight formation of Tie Fighters
To me, playing on top of this Death Star terrain makes a game of X-wing miniatures feel so much more cinematic.
I’ve taken care to make this model a modular design. You can reconfigure the layout to any arrangement you can imagine! You can build a fairly traditional trench run layout:
Or you can take advantage of the modular design to make up some other, original layout:
Creating varied terrain layouts would be great way for the Imperial player to offer new challenges to the Rebel player!
I’ve chosen to keep my Death Star Trench model mostly unpainted, but...I would love to see what some of you great painters out there could do with it! Some shading, highlighting, and weathering especially on the turbolaser turrets I think would look awesome!
I’m very happy finally to get a chance to share this passion project of mine with you!
If anyone is interested in commissioning prints, I’m starting to set up to print orders! Due to this project’s scale--"Look at the size of that thing!"--please note that printing sets require a large amount of material cost and that it will take a significant amount of time to print sets. If you're interested in discussing further, please direct message me or email me at: [email protected]
Thanks for looking! Hope you enjoy it!
Edited by DeathStarEngineer
