GOTHIC RUINS

I have developed a bizarre hatred of those plastic gothic ruins you got in the 3rd ed. 40K boxed set. I mean, there's nothing wrong with them as such, but everyone has them. Every club has at least one set, sometimes based and painted on a wet weekend when there was nothing else to do. They're just so generic. So when I got some in a Cadian battleforce box, I decided to make some sort of city-fight esque fire-bases from them. No generic plastic ruins for this puppy!

First thing I did was lop most of the windows off the big ruin. Frankly, I don't think they'd stay up in that state and it gave me extra bits to make the ruin bigger. I used a off-cut of MDF I found in my dads shed for a base.

TIP: Never, ever leave home until it is unavoidable. Your dad's shed is full of nifty stuff which is all free! And besides, you can't afford to buy your own tools, right?
I added some stuff from my bitz box to make a improvised urban fort. Some big truck wheels, fuel drums etc. I also used a lot of polystyrene to build up rubble mounds. The rubble itself is a 50/50 mix of gravel and sand. Having gotten thus far, I decided to knock the other ruin together but on a smaller base this time.
This ruin only has rubble, as I wanted to make the fortification entirely from sand bags. The sand bags are made from air-drying clay, rolled into sausages, flattened out, and cut to size.

TIP: Your knife's handle makes a very good rolling pin. Use it to flatten the clay.
The sand bags where plunked down on the base so they followed to contours of the buildings and rubble. I did four layers on each piece, since it seemed to look right. This used up almost an entire block of modeling clay, but being sensible, I didn't use greenstuff like it says in the 'how to make wargames terrain book.' I mean come on people, that costs $11 for two sticks. That'd be about eight sand bags damnit! Air Clay from your local craft shop should be about $5 per block. Each block is 400g. You do the maths. Only make sure it's air drying, otherwise you have to bake it. Which does your terrain no good.

TIP: adding corpses, abandoned or destroyed weapons and equipment to these sort of terrain pieces gives them a fought over look.

Since completing these ruins, I have discovered that air drying clay does not stick to itself when it's dry. It seems to be okay, but I keep losing sand bags damnit! Make sure you use PVA glue to hold your sand bags together. Repairs can be made with Supa Glue, but I don't think you could glue the wet clay with it.