Hello everyone! Welcome to the first Planet of the Week Showcase! In this article, we will be looking at the planet Tatooine! In this article, we will look at the terrain type, obstacles and environment that we can build, and special structures such as Jabba’s Palace. Fair warning that this post will be a little image and video heavy. These projects can be long and tough, so it’s always good to have a decent library of them somewhere.

Terrain Type

Tatooine can be split into two types of terrain: Sand Dunes and Stone. If you want to get a game mat, you’d be best off getting something simple with a sand stone terrain (such as Swallowing Sands from Mats by Mars)or even printing custom ones based on images you have created or find on the internet such as “The Suns of Tatooine” mat by Stellar Intelligence Network. If you are like me, and find game mats to be too expensive you have two more options, you can either purchase a cheap beige table cloth and leave it as is, or you can dress up it up with paints and other materials used for making Wargaming terrain.

Although this tutorial is mostly directed towards kids, it gives out really great pointers on how to prepare and paint your cloth for simple textures and terrain. It is also the cheapest and fastest solution.

On the other hand, we have this tutorial. This tutorial was created for Wargaming such as Warhammer 40k or even Star Wars Legion, but the principle of painting and texturing your terrain is the same. This one is a little more time consuming and expensive, but in the end, you will end up with a great looking mat.

For the sand textures, here are some amazon links to cheap materials that you use (unless you’ve got easier access to sand):

https://www.amazon.com/Desert-Basing-Materials-WWS-Miniatures/dp/B0716Y316W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520100698&sr=8-1&keywords=terrain+sand

https://www.amazon.com/World-ARMY-FINE-MODEL-DEBRIS/dp/B01MSUCBMD/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1520100698&sr=8-2&keywords=terrain+sand

https://www.amazon.com/ARMY-FINE-MODEL-SAND-200G/dp/B01KFOWSPU/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1520100698&sr=8-11&keywords=terrain+sand

Obstacles and Environments

Every video game, movie, or other form of visual media has represented Tatooine in their own fashion. Personally, I like adapting elements from the Star Wars Battlefront, Empire at War and Knights of the Old Republic games.

Most of the obstacles will be rock structures. They can come in the form of towers or arches.

To build the rock towers, I would recommend these tutorials:

For archways, you would follow the same basic principles where you’d make a base and attach foam bits together with glue and tooth picks. Once that is all done, you simple take an xacto knife or use your finger to shape out your arches.

Another technique I found to weather rocks would be to use a base layer of spray paint. The spray paint will eat away at parts of the foam and give it a rougher, rockier look to it!

Here you can find some different screenshots of Tatooine, various obstacle ideas, a quick and simple desert image for mat printing and a little Sarlacc token that you can print and use to really sell that it is Tatooine.

If you want a to scale Sarlacc Pit, it would only be 1.1 cm in diameter! The Micro Machines playset makes for a good stand-in for this.

Finally we have the Jawa Sandcrawler! According to Legends material on Wookiepedia, Sandcrawlers are about 20 meters in height and about 40 meters in length. What that means is that it is twice as long as an AT-AT and almost the same height as well! In X-Wing Scale, that would make the Sandcrawler 7.4 cm tall and 14.81 cm long (or 2.91 inches tall and 5.83 inches long)

Although it is not in the same scale, I provided it so that you can use it as a sort of reference if you were to scratch build it. According to Rebelscale.com the Action Fleet Sandcrawler comes in at a scale of 1/241 and the F-Toys one comes in at 1/343. They’re the only Sandcrawler toys available in a size that is close enough to X-Wing.

Structures and Buildings

If you are deciding to make Imperial Structures and objectives for your Tatooine Mat, something you must consider is weathering. Due to the harsh climates of the desert, everything is weathered and corroded. A good weathering technique for that would be the “salt” technique.

The thing with Tatooine is that a lot of the farms and buildings are small, and it’s easy to come up with your own designs. Your best bet would be going something that looks very sketchy and criminal-esque. As we all know Tatooine is full of criminal activity! These Scum buildings should also be weathered heavily.

Jabba’s Palace

The only building on Tatooine that is big enough to be an obstacle would be the one and only Hutt Castle! In the the google drive link I provided, I managed to get a TIE Fighter close enough to Jabba’s Palace in order to get a sense of scale for it. I also used images and screenshots from Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The base would be round with a diameter of 7 inches. Although you could argue it could be in the shape of an ellipse with a width of 7 inches and length of 7.75 inches.

The height of the castle itself would be around 7.5 inches tall.

The surrounding towers would range from 9 inches tall (with a base of 3 inches), 7.75-8 inches tall (with a base of 3 inches), 4 inches tall (with a base of 3 inches),and 3.5 inches tall (with a base of 4-4.25 inches).

You’d want it resting on a small, mountain like base that is a few centimeters tall.

This is what I came up with, it is not accurate but it’s the best that I could do with what I had! If anyone has any sort of source book or material that has

http://www.sandtroopers.com/sandwatch/hawthorne_village/005/ for more images on Jabba’s Palace

Overall, it is up to you design Tatooine however you see fit! If you guys decide to craft any of this, please send us photos and we’ll post them here or in their special showcase! If there is a planet or moon you would like to see, write us a comment here!

Until next time, Fly Casual!