Armies On Parade - Sculpting a bunker

[Ruadhan2300]

Hi All

So myself and my flatmate (both huge 40k fans) are thinking on a cool new project. We want to mimic the Warhammer World displays a bit and create a battle scene between his Orks and my Mechanicum forces.
We're planning to go all out, models in posed 1v1 fights, explosion mushroom-clouds, the lot.
We've done a fair few smaller pieces in the past, nothing bigger than a 160mm round base though.

We've got a year or so to do it.

My issue is that for my part, I want to make a Mechanicum bunker in the side of a hill. the Admech are guarding the exterior while the Magos does whatever he needs to do inside.
The key feature for me is that I want to be able to see into the bunker. Picture the terrain rising up in a fairly steep slope and in the back of the board there's cutaways into the interior. much like GW's displays at WH:W. I'm thinking of the dwarf vs skaven caverns display specifically, but if you need a visual example, the Ant-Farm from XCOM:EU might be a good one
16151

I'm undecided on how to build the rooms for this, anyone who has any feedback is very welcome to give it!
Should I be building the rooms as seperate components and then carving holes in the back of the hill to fit them in?
Or should I build them in-situ?

I'm leaning towards the first, it sounds like it's easier to clean up the edges than it is to build inside an alcove.

[Morgrim]

Instead of building the hill then carving bits into it to fit the rooms, I'd build the rooms as components and then use something like insulation foam to build the hill around them. That'd probably help keep your weight down too.