I’m happy to be joined on the blog this week by my Legion (and X-Wing TMG Slack) compatriot and friend PCGamerPirate, who has consistently impressed me with his versatile and cost-effective terrain work.

He wrote this article at my request, and I’m extremely pleased to present it as part of my ongoing Terrain Tutorials series. If you have questions or just want to say hello, be sure ping him in the Legion Discord!

Line of sight blocking terrain is crucial to making an interesting battlefield for Legion. One of the easiest forms of this kind of terrain is ruins. In this article, we will be making the pyramid structures seen on Yavin IV in various forms of media.

What you’ll need:

Foamcore (preferably dollar store)

Craft knife

Metal Ruler

Hot glue gun

Brown spray paint

Light brown craft paint

Brown wash

Black wash

Green paint

1) Cut Your Shapes

No matter how tall you want your pyramid, the general rule of thumb that I use is the top edge of the pyramid is one inch shorter than the bottom edge. This creates a nice pyramid shape.

Shown in the image, draw a straight line across your foamcore 4” from the edge. On this line, mark off ½”, then 3”, then 4”, then 3”, then 4”. On the edge of the foam core, mark off 4”, then 3”, then 4”, then 3”. Connect your marks as shown above. Cut along the lines you’ve drawn. (Always cut straight lines in foamcore with a craft knife and a metal ruler as a guide)

You’ll also want to cut a 3 ¼” square. (Note this will make a top that must be trimmed down, if you don’t want to trim the top, measure the thickness of your foamcore and add that to the length of the top edge to make your square)

2) Assemble the Sides

Assemble your pyramid as shown below using hot glue. Joining your sides in a spiral fashion will make the pyramid square.

3) Peeling

Dollar store foamcore has really cheap glue and makes it easy to peel off the cardboard (learned this tip from Wyloch Tutorials youtube). Peel off both sides of your square top and the outside of your pyramid sides. Then hot glue the top to the pyramid.

4) Brickwork

Draw a brick pattern. Using a ballpoint pen, draw a brick pattern you like. Squares are a much simpler and faster pattern but I prefer the randomness of L-shaped and angled bricks. The key to unify your whole structure is to continue bricks around the edges.

5) Paint

Use brown spray paint on the foam. Usually you want to avoid spray painting foam directly because it melts it, however, in the case of making ruins, we are going to use this property to our advantage. The spray paint will make a ragged an uneven texture.

Use a brown wash on all the brick lines. It’s okay to be sloppy because the next step is a heavy dry brush with a lighter brown.

The recesses will stay that dark brown color and the whole pyramid will lighten up.

6) Weathering

Using a black wash and starting at the top, paint a line of wash along a brick line and feather it down in a random-ish pattern. You can do the same kind of weathering using green paint to simulate moss.

Now troops on both sides are ready to hide behind our new ruins terrain!

Final Note: A lot of inspiration and techniques were adapted from Wylock Crafting Videos and The Crafting Muse