Amongst the Ruins (Mygeeto Build Part One)

July 09, 2022

Amongst the Ruins (Mygeeto Build Part One)

Geonosis! It's the Clone Wars, that's where you have to start right? Swarms of droids and squads of Clone fighting under the red horizon. It's about as iconic Star Wars as you can get. Since my roommate and I got into Legion, Geonosis has been our battleground, whether cardboard box/wine bottle or crafted foam terrain. I'm working on a campaign that will hopefully be playable soon that pits Republic against the Separatists during the Second Battle of Geonosis. It's a great location for Legion.

But, part of what I love so much about Star Wars is how expansive the universe is. The Clone Wars was a galactic war of, obviously, galactic proportions. I have always been far more interested in the campaigns that our main characters did not fight in. Part of this is for the very fact that many of the battles Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi fought in were rather short campaigns. Our dynamic duo had to get on to the next episode! Many of the battles they fight in throughout the Clone Wars show are precision strikes against a specific target, even the 2nd Battle of Geonosis arc is a battle for a specific droid factory. What about the planetary-wide invasions (yes, 2nd Geonosis was a massive invasion, but you get me?) As I have gone back and forth about what our next battlefield should be, the Outer Rim Sieges have checked the box of all out war for me.

Hence, the Mygeeto Campaign.

In both Canon and Legends, the Mygeeto Campaign was one of the longest battles of the Clone Wars, lasting between 2-3 years depending on the timeline. It was a drawn out, desperate war of attrition. In many ways, it was the Stalingrad, the Verdun, of the Clone Wars. Of course, our pretend space battles should never be compared to these absolutely horrifying experience millions of men, women, and children experienced, but when we look at building the battlefield of Mygeeto, these titanic engagements can help us where the source material does not.

There's very few reference materials for Mygeeto. Only the short ROTS scene, a few comic issues, some unused concept art, and the Star Wars Battlefront 2 map provide official Lucasfilm images of Mygeeto. Most of these focus in and around the bridges where Ki-Adi-Mundi meets his end. But, our Mygeeto battlefield can't just be a bridge. We need to do some extrapolating.

The Star Wars wiki states that in Legends, Mygeeto was mostly uninhabited, but the Banking Clan did construct some cities to help administer the crystal mines around the planet. These industrial cities would be populated mostly by working class Muuns, similar to Stalingrad's role as an industrial and transportation hub in the Soviet Union. As Mygeeto's economy rivaled that of Coruscant's, these couldn't be tiny cities either.

Stalingrad, 1939

The architecture certainly isn't the same, but the similarities as metropolises for industrial workers will help inform our build.

Our battlefield will be Mygeeto long into its battle. The beautiful glowing buildings will be replaced by smoldering ruins and makeshift fortifications.

The war-torn ruins might be futuristic, but they're still war-torn ruins. OmnisBlade's deviantart.

One of Stalingrad's lasting images is that of a ruined city in the snow. This isn't entirely true, as the 5 month battle began in August. But, there was very intense fighting in the winter.

The harsh winter climate of Mygeeto is one of the reasons the Galactic Marines feature prominently in the battle. Adrian Cornejo.

Ritter Thomas's ArtStation was a key resource for this project. Citing the lack of information about Mygeeto, he modeled a fair amount of buildings in Unreal Engine.

Based on the sources I was able to gather, it's clear that the architecture of Mygeeto has one unifying feature: circles. Most of what I built was going to need to be cylindrical. For the towers, I decided that frisbees would be the closest and cheapest option. For the larger pieces, I used these discs, and I used these for the smaller ones. It's very possible that these exact listings will never be back in stock, but they should give you a starting place if you are hoping to do this build as well.

The first thing buildings I decided to build would be two of the larger towers, each in a differing state of repair. I laid out how I wanted to build the general shape of the buildings.

That looks a little bit like Mygeeto! Gluing it together turned out to be a harder job than I expected. I thought hot glue would be a good option, as it would help increase the surface area between the edges of the discs. For the most part, the larger frisbees worked fine (I did have to go back over some trouble spots), but the smaller frisbees were much poorer quality and did not fit together well. To mitigate this, I cut out pieces of cardboard (the thinner kind found on the back of notebooks) to put between them. It was still a little finicky, but I was able to make it work.

The first building I wanted to have a large platform that could hold multiple units or have other terrain placed on top. I had a wood circular board that fit perfectly as a base. I then glued a few pieces of corrugated construction paper to the base.

The second building I wanted to be partially destroyed. I started the process the same, but used part of a pop can to create the impression that the tower had collapsed.

I then attached empty sprues in a way that was supposed to imply that the tower supports had collapsed in such a way to build a platform. Using more corrugated cardboard and plastic scraps, I made it a bit easier to place figures on it.