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I wrote this article for my blog Imperius Dominatus and I thought I'd share it with you guys

Firstly I am going to get a disclaimer in and say this wasn't my idea as much as I'd like to take ownership of it. I thought I'd be honest and say I saw it in a several years old White Dwarf I found under my bed and I thought why not it looks so simple even I can do it!

What you need tool wise is a pair of scissors and a hobby knife, personally I use a stanley knife which does well. Your bitz box would be handy as well.

You will need some modular movement trays from Games Workshop. Make sure you get these and not the normal movement trays as I believe they are bigger but the lips aren't fixed on which is extremely handy. In the pack you get two 200mm square sheets and then the lips to go round the edge. Don't throw away the lips as they can come in useful later.



First thing to do is get your building and mark out the size of the base needed for it. You can mark on the sheet in pen or put a small score on the sheet with the knife. Once you've marked out the sheet get the pair of scissors and cut out the base you need. In my case my buildings aren't a set square and a irregular shape so I needed to make a large square area then a smaller area and join them together. Here's the bases cut and glued together for my ruin.



Secondly you need to modify the base if it is sitting on underneath a ruin as perfectly square floor tiles for a ruined building just doesn't fit. Get the scissors and randomly cut out parts of the tiles along the edges, you'll note it might be worth doing this before gluing seperate pieces together . Because of the irregular angles and cuts from the scissors get the knife and smooth down the cuts. If you have any off cuts from the sheet and they are in good condition just put them to one side .

Now it is time to raid your bitz box and loot any spare parts you have, Cities of Death bits would suit here mostly and are great for holding two pieces together. Of course add any other bitz you seem fit as well. Oh, those tile off cuts I mentioned, cut them up and stick them onto the base to look like broken tiles



Before I move onto the third step I'll warn you now there is no pictures as I haven't got this far myself, but when I do I'll add some plus its pretty simple and I am sure you can imagine the outcome.

What you need to do now is put some basing on your building base. Not all over it just in areas. You know those lips I told you to keep earlier, well chop them up put a big blob of glue on the board and drop them down then pour glue over them so they stick together. Once everything is dry give it a undercoat of chaos black you will then just need to dry brush the floor tiles I'm suggesting dry brush to leave the black spaces between and paint the rubble and basing etc etc. You can then dry brush the edges which were cut to soften them up and make them look worn and if you wanted to add a little bit of flock as well

Hope that helps and enjoy

Nice tut.
Only caveat I can see would be cost. How many movement trays would you need to cover the footprint, of say, the GW Basillicum ruin or the Manifactorium?

The trays are £6.15 from G.W for two sheets 200mm squad so a decent coverage. Of course you can get them else where cheaper.

The question is how big is your ruin? I've built the administratum how it is in the box and I've used about 2/3's on a single sheet. Out of the two sheets I've used I have managed to make three bases, one of these is for the manufactorum as well

You can get mosaic tiles, lino, etc from hardware stores, and scale items from dolls house type shops which would work well if stuck onto a thin bit of board.

That's a good idea matey, bonus of the trays is you don't need any board and is G.W product as well

Careful Merc, with the recent climate you might just get lynched for that

I know I know luckily I get my stuff cheap and I've got all my stuff already to minimal expense for me now, well until Necrons come out . Though still don't buy it direct from G.W but if I was in Oz I'd be pissed off..

Evergreen http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/index.htm also has sheets of "Sidewalk" (light scoring) or "Tile" (deep scoring) with various sizes of squares on them. They are only 1mm thick but for flooring on a base could provide another alternative.

Nice find, but I couldn't see any pictures on there :(

I'll try to remember to take a pic tonight as I picked some up.
And yes, their website is frustrating for it's lack of pictures for some of the products. We all know what a tube is but I would have never thought to pick up a sheet of "sidewalk" until I saw it on the Evergreen rack in a modeling store.

i've done this a lot. i've tried the ever green scale models stuff and it isn't really as good as the movement trays