Geohex is back! My perfect SWMB terrain project begins!

[TauntaunScout]

Old news to some of you. But Geohex, makers of most all the terrain seen in the original SWMB books, is back in business after about a decade-long hiatus.

It would appear from studying the pics that WEG got a basic desert set, a desert rough hills set, and a bunch of custom trees/shrubs from Geohex. I moved mountains trying to get my hands on geohex terrain when I was a kid, to no avail.

So.

I have ordered a desert basic set. If I'm happy with the quality I'll report back and order the rough hill expansion. I have also made a copy of that hut from the page with the lizardmen, sourced a good stone arch bridge kit, and mae a mold of a bunch of low walls.

Seems like I should just go ahead and make a moisture farm, 30 or so low piles of cargo, 30 or so 3" triangular bases of vegetation, and have the terrain setup from the book!

I'll keep you posted with photos as the project progresses.

[TauntaunScout]

Been digging in the basement. Unbeknownst to me I've accumulated 15 WEG Jawas, so, I should paint them up for Tatooine games. If only I could find more Sand People. Only have 4 or 5 on foot and a bantha riding one.

My collection of WEG figures from the Cantina, Jabba's Palace, and Bounty Hunters sets is also kinda ridiculously large. Time to invent my own mercenary companies and paint up a squad of each in distinctive colors. Any suggestions? I'm thinking a squad of 10 armored bounty hunters and a squad of 10 unarmored space pirates to start. To use as the neutral forces that pop up in published scenarios.

Edit: Inspiration struck me. I will paint my two squads of neutral troops as the gangs from Classic Campaigns. The Vibroblades and Benthar's Boys. Blue with yellow and red trim are the one's colors, the other's are green with red and orange trim. Frankly those combinations will get confusing if they are on opposing sides. So I will drop the red from both of them and omit the term "trim" when interpreting them. A blue & yellow gang, and a green & orange gang, will be much more distinct. 10 unarmored humanoids in blue and yellow will make nicely ostentatious space pirates preference will be given to figures with capes or sashes because I'll want lots of big broad areas of cloth to contrast. The green and orange squad will be armored figures.

I won't worry about what weapons the models have, no one ever played SWMB as a terribly strictly WYSIWYG type of game that I knew of. As long as each squad contains up to 7 duplicate troops, 1 commander pose, and 2 different poses to denote specialists.

[TauntaunScout]

There are just quick cell phone pics from last night, I will try and get some good pictures today. I have 1 dozen bases of vegetation now, a vaporator and a Tatooine house made up. Old Blood Angel shown for scale. Now that everything is good and dry I will touch up the edges of the bases which didn't always get enough flock stuck to them.

There is a batch of 3 weird red and white alien trees(?) to use for special effects if I need to. Such as dangerous terrain, an objective, etc. Other than that I just made a bunch of low scrub, bushes, and giant spore plants. A couple of the bases I made as normal earthling bushes so I have a start on a forest to use in historical games or classic fantasy settings.

Next up I'll make a batch of 7 bases of terran trees. The first three are underway, I just made them from whatever I had around. The rest I will make by getting some BIG model railroad trees. Wargamers tend to use trees that are far to small. The average neighborhood trees are far taller than the houses around them, but in wargames all we ever see are short little trees sadly. I will base my terran trees up to match my alien ones so I can make one huge Star Wars forest. I'll lean towards evergreens as they will fit a variety of settings on earth (you find them in almost every region/ecosystem) and they are evocative of Endor for Star Wars purposes. The WEG SWMB book was obviously the look I'm going for.

[TauntaunScout]

3 bases of crazy red trees that are presumably dangerous terrain, or some other type of special effect if I need them to be.

As for normal trees, I couldn't find the type of Terran trees I wanted so I had to use these ones instead. I have 3 more bases of slightly bigger Terran trees in the works right now. These plants are on a pizza box, fresh from the outdoors where they got two coats of spray varnish to reduce shedding. I did go and trim some of the tufts of tall grass after I took these pics, they weren't meant to be that tall. But it's easier to place too-big grasses, wait for the glue to dry, then trim them. My rebel fleet troopers need some shading and highlighting too... dug these guys out of storage. Umpteen years ago when I painted them I was in a hurry so besides black shading for the grey pants, and grey drybrushing on the black vests, I skipped the shading/highlighting and never got back them. A couple years back I realized that if I never painted certain 40k armies, no amount of miniatures would ever be enough, so I started painting those "I always meant to, and thought I would have by now..." armies. Once i checked them off, I felt a huge pressure lifted regarding painting. Then last week or so I realized the same was true of certain scenery. If I don't make the scenery from some beloved old books, I'll never feel like my scenery collection is done. So here we go. For the last 20-odd years everytime I see styrofoam balls I think "I could make a Star Wars house from that" so hopefully that goes away now. Ditto sparkplugs and vaporators. Everytime I see spark plugs in the store, I think "I really want to build a vaporator". So there we go. I have endless topographical features from my GeoHex setup, plus a moisture farm, and 15 bases of vegetation. 4 more bases in the works. Probably finish the vegetation collection somewhere between 20 and 30 bases. I assemble my GeoHex terrain on a blue felt cloth, so I can pop out hexes to create ponds, streams, or shorelines, so I am also all set on water for my games.

It's amazing how adding a few weird orb fruit things, and lots of fall colors, makes ordinary bushes look "alien". I plan on having about half the finished collection be Terran trees and bushes though, so I can have a forest in any 25mm or bigger game setting. I guess some of the trees and plants would work for 15mm but not all of them.

I'll also make a couple more Tatooine buildings to turn my moisture farm into the suggestion of a town.

https://imgur.com/e51DpTA
https://imgur.com/MwJH26V
https://imgur.com/aCVy7Lb
https://imgur.com/yzGVASa
https://imgur.com/rABfN4O
https://imgur.com/xXfogZt
https://imgur.com/9OBOLBE
https://imgur.com/TkVwRf4
https://imgur.com/ZTAoieo

[TauntaunScout]

Time to redo my vegetation. As you can see I messed up my ground cover and the bases of trees don't really match the GeoHex terrain. Plus... I snag 144 of the "real" styrene bases GeoHex used to sell and which were featured in the SWMB book!
https://imgur.com/BXo8QzS

[Pel]

Looks great! I'm intrigued by the red foliage. Did you paint that or were you able to find it somewhere?

Pretty cool setup overall.
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Aha!

[TauntaunScout]

[Pel]

I particularly like the trees you used for the red foliage plants. Turned horizontally, they look like alien plants. Well done!
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Aha!

[TauntaunScout]