Ewok Village, Now with Pictures

[Ghenghis_Ska]

Last week soon after the release of the Swamp Village I purchased it with the intent of making an Ewok style Village.

Friday I printed out a few trees and basses as well as some platforms (and worked on a kit bash of a few platforms that don't exsist", and over the weekend I startred Construction of some of the items. To do a test run to get the hang of the set.

As it is now all I have are two trees done (to a height I want), and two large circular platforms that go on top of them.

I plan to take pictures of what I have constructed tonight, one of the reasons I am starting this topic is to force me to take them and put up the pictures.

A few notes I have discovered so far.
The torches on the railings are very fiddly, they tend to bend after cutting,out the white space around them, I plan on fixing this in my build in one of two ways. Cutting some of them off out right to give a sparser tourch light to the area, and/or putting some thicker small supports from wood, toothpicks or something like that to give them more strenght.

I had wanted to cut out the black between the rail supports but think that if the torches are that fiddly these will be just as bad. Tape could be used to make it more supported and still allow light to pass through for a better effect (did this on a Madian build) but not sure I want to go to the trouble, and not sure how easy it will be on the ones I already put on.

I have a few ideas of how I want these to go together, and a few mod's (done a few already, but there is one I thought of last night that will take a bit more work to do, after this I am off to do some math to figure out how to get it to work....

[Ghenghis_Ska]

First two trees


First Hut


Proof of concept for tree height.

[Lord_Abbadon]

Very neat. You should look at adding static grasses and the like to the base. Also maybe some hanging moss from the platform.


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

[Gamesmith Denny]

Sweet! I love Ewok's

[Gallagen]

Wow! Thats awesome! Keep up the pics please...

[Ghenghis_Ska]

[Gamesmith Denny]

NICE! Really exciting watching this one evolve. Thanks for sharing!

[LD2062]

Looks good.

[morganm]

Your Ewok village build is coming along real nice!

How stable are those tall trees when you get the treehouse on top ? Could someone bump the table pretty good and they would stay up? Is the base weighted at all to help stabalize them?

[Skunkape]

When I purchased Hinterlands, I built a bunch of tree trunks, just about 3 inches worth so I could use them for forest regions and still allow access to the table top for mini movement. I put a washer, 1 to 1 1/2" is the size I used, can't remember the exact size off the top of my head.

Anyway, I cut a 3 x 3 inch square of foamcore, glued the washer to it, then glued a grass grid piece to it and finally, glued the tree trunk on that. The combination of square foamcore and washer makes them very stable, well plus I'm sure the short height as well.

I would bet if you did something similar, it would make them stable even with the treehouse on top. I need to get back to work though as I've only got 12 trees and I need a whole lot more, plus I need to add bushes to some of the bases.

Forgot to add, nice looking build you've got so far, I like the direction you're taking it.

[Ghenghis_Ska]

There are more pictures up in the WWG gallery.
Swamp Village gallery yeah I could have called it Ewok Village, but I used the WWG set name, I just tagged it with Ewok

Lord_Abbadon - I plan on doing something more with it not 100% sure what. This is kind of a Proof of Concept with the first to, to get the hang of how the set goes together. I messed up on the first Platform/walkway I made but was able to fix it, so as of now its a WIP.

Denny & Gallagen - More Pictures will come, likely not tonight as it will be a bit of printing and partial building while I am at an RPG session, lots of cutting, scoring etc durring down moments tonight and little building.


morganm & Skunkape - So far they seem pretty stable from a toppeling over stand point. The way I build Large open "crushable" surfaces means the trees are actually Very heavy compaired to what some one else might make. I really kind of hate all of the excess card stock that is left over after you cut out the bits to use... so I generally Use it for reinforcement inside a model. Each one of those tree sections has inside of it about 7 layers of "waste" Card stock wrapped around the inside of the tree for support so they won't be crushed when picked up, There is also internal bracers to lock the tree into shape... also made from Waste/scrap cardstock. An up shot of all of the extra cardstock in the tree is it makes them weigh more than the platforms. So while the base isn't weighted down, the Tree is pushing down on the base in the center which helps to stablize them.

I also think that when the "village" is built it will help to stablize itself.
These two are designed by the sketch of the village I made to interlock with two other platforms, forming a square. That will help stablize them more I think, as well as the ones that will come off of those. By the time this is done it will be a decent sized little Village. With 3 trees on a side kind of like this. (EDIT) Added the walkways

[DeltaIce]

Thanks for sharing the photos and your experience with the set thus far. It looks really good and has confinced me to buy the set.

[Skunkape]

[Ghenghis_Ska]

As an interesting side note, Star Wars Insider, the Fan Club magazine I got in the mail today, has a little three page article on Ewoks

[LD2062]

The huts are pretty stable. But you could over balance the walkway hut with a bunch of metal minis along only 1 edge.

However the canopy is more unstable a single big metal mini placed at the edge, especially the long edge, can tip it over. So on the canopy its important to keep things balanced.

Connecting tree together will definitely help stabilize things. When I do my layout I'm going to use removable poster gum to attach the bases to the board.

[Exploding_youth]

That's pretty neat! The Ewoks look right at home in that shot

[Ghenghis_Ska]

LD2062 - Ah, there are a couple of assumptions you made that I won't be doing. Out of the likely 4500 minis I curently own (and yeah this is an under estimation becuase it's not accuratly taking into account other plastic "minis" I have tasked from various other sources) I would say maybe 60 are metal, out of that 60 , maybe 25 get use at all most of them are in storage as I really don't like metal minis for a number of reasons. Out of the 25 that aren't in storage maybe 2-4 get used at anytime in a game. So there will never be a large amount of Metal minis on these, and non "large".

Not planing on putting the Canopy on. The only canopy I saw in Swamp Village was a a type of broad leafed deciduous canopy, these are coniferous in style trees. I was thinking about putting more trunk on and running the trunk up a bit higher, and just sticking branchs from Hinterlands on (and maybe some off the bottom of the base to give it camoflague from the ground). But there will be no caopy for metal mini to unbalance.

[Ghenghis_Ska]

I had to cut the last message short, needed to do something for my boss...

LD2062 - I might be doing something similar to your poster gum Idea, not sure. I wanted to make this decently being able to take apart for storage. So the Trunks are one section and the Platforms are another. I can take that platform base off of the tree trunk and it makes two smaller items to store. Not sure if that was your idea or not.


Last night I did mostly Scoring, Cutting and Edging of Huts, Walkways, Trunks, and the like things that I will need a bunch more of. There will be a bit of a "concept bash" it's not really a Kit bash As i did nothing to really physically or visually change one of the sets components I just totally retasked it, and used it in a conceptually differnt way than "designed" to be used, and I think it Worked out AWESOME, it will totally fix one of the nagging things that I had with my own design of the village. It is however getting melded with a typical kit bash so I think it will be a treat for the designers to see.

After all of the cutting edging and scoring I did last night, I should be able to quickly get it built and the other Platform I will need to make enough to do a Square of 4 platforms to give the idea of what the whole thing will look like when done.

[LD2062]

I was talking about what happened when I tested my built. I also don't use metal minis, but I have some so I thought I'd use them to test the stability.

I do like the idea of just continuing the tree up higher with branches.


To make mine easier to store. I built the huts and bases with sleeves and removable trunks. Like the canopy is made to do.

How tall are you base trunks? Are those 2 sections glued together?

[Ghenghis_Ska]

[LD2062]

I think your combined trunk is just right with the Walker. a very good visual look without being so tall you have to stand the whole game to use the platform.

Do you have seigeworks so you can make the log trap to smash into it?

[Ghenghis_Ska]

According to the ownership badge I do... huh... I must have bought it for the balista and a few other things during a D&D game.
Huhm so I will check the CD of all of the cardstock terrain I have at home for it.

Was thinking before you mentioned seigeworks of just using a tree trunk form Hinterlands. I may have to dig out my RotJ discs and watch the Battle of Endor again to get some up to date references for the Village.

There are a few extra things I was going to put around, like a look out post, and for if I ever use this in a skirmish game a way to get up to the village itself (a few actually).

But I seem to remember a basket and then swinging into the village. Not sure if the basket was just from the Playset for action figures, or in the movie as well. But I seem to remember a scene in the movie of them swining into the village... don't remember how they got to the level to swing into but i remember like a rope swing.

[Ghenghis_Ska]

[LD2062]

Nice. When I started building I made a small hut by accident. But they look great for ewoks. i never considered clustering a bunch of them on 1 platform. Its a great way to make a lager village without needing a huge table to make a layout.

[Ghenghis_Ska]