Star Wars Tatooine Buildings by Northern Lights

Some folks despise painting terrain; others love it. I kind of fall in the middle - love to get it done but procrastinate like Hell over getting the project underway.

"Rods" hot-rod speeder shop.

One fellow who never seems to procrastinate about anything is Conscript Byron of Northern Lights terrain. I've proselytized his stuff on the blog before but I just finished another batch of his MDF terrain and wanted to post it.

These are his "Sci-Fi Desert Buildings" and they are absolutely ace. Clearly inspired by the buildings seen on the desert planet Tatooine in the Star Wars saga, the set includes five structures of various sizes: two small houses, one larger "duplex" house, a "garage", and the Cantina.

The buildings are laser-cut MDF and assemble quickly and easily. They also include some greeblies that can be used as decoration, keycode panels, etc. and these are quite handy. You supply your own syrofoam balls to cut in half for the domes.

I used some mis-tinted latex paint picked up at Home Depot (for a buck a pot, no less!) to paint the buildings. I got two pots - a darker brown and a light tan. I added clean sand to the darker colour to make my own texture paint and basecoated with that. Step two was to liberally drybrush with the lighter tone. After that was final signwriting and work on painting and weathering the doors.

Here are the buildings with some of the WotC models from the late lamented Star Wars Miniature Battles game.

Jawas corner a helpless R5 unit. Look out! (Sign says "Chalman's Cantina" in Star Wars script)

Threepio and Artoo after being thrown out of the Cantina. Power Droid commiserates.

Stormtroopers check the side-by-side house for droids, or misdirected mail.

Norther Lights' terrain kits are awesome and highly recommended. The Sci-Fi Desert Buildings set retails for $80CAD and is available direct from Northern Lights.