[Lord Commander Erus]

I'm getting ready to start my chapter next month, as most of you know. Now my question here is this: I've never bothered much on basing beyond basics. I've learned a lot reading your guys stuff, but for this force i'd like to do something i've never done or head about.

I'd like to know some advice how to base my guys in a sort of ruined church bit. I will be making a gaming board for the game room in my new apartment as well, and plan on making it a sort of entrenched monastery (parts of it shelled, etc..) with trenching and turrets on the monastery side (this will be edge to edge, on the opposite side of the usual deployment zones so no one has an insane advantage) with some craters, etc.. On the far extreme edge I wanted some sort of natural terrain, like forestry or mountains.

What i'm asking here is for you brilliant people to help point me, or tell me, how I would model terrain of the above type, suggestions for bases, bits from GW or FW that might work good for a Chapel/Fortress Monastery of Space Marines. How would one go about beginning to make a game board, carve trenches, make craters, etc..

Where can I get some good gun emplacements/pillboxes, or how to make them. I'd also like most of this except the trenches to be modular, where it can be lifted off the board and swapped out for other terrain. Ideally, the terrain itself might be divided into 4's so the board can be completely swapped. A ruined road/path might look cool too. And how to make cliffs/rocks, trees, or even scratch build a ruined monastery.