They take a beating and keep on bleeding without hurting anyone. They are portable and easily assembled. They are the medal pinned on the chest of every fortress, worn proudly by the walls and barriers of protection behind which cower the squishy fleshy things we call our bodies. I speak of course of sandbag emplacements. How they enrich the tabletop battlefields by their symbolic impenetrability. They cry out to your opponent, "Go ahead, make my day...."

In this article you will learn some basic sculpting techniques and apply them to building your own sandbag emplacements or modular terrain. I would rate this a 2 out of 5 for difficulty.
Here's how mine look:


What you will need:

- Sculpting medium (I used magic clay from dollarama, though I suspect this is the same product as "Model Magic Clay" from Crayola. Any epoxy will work as well and offer much more detail, though at a significant increase in cost) Another benefit to magic clay/model magic is that it is nigh indestructible when dry. It dries like fun foam, so I have literally thrown them against the wall without damaging them.
- Hobby knife or equivilent
- Toothpick or sharp pointy thingy

To start you will need to be able to form the bags themselves. I do this by pinching a lump of clay from the ball I typically keep in the palm of my hand.

I then proceed to roll the edges of both sides inwards, then pinch the bag into shape. With practice you will be able to do this very quickly, which is important when working with clay to make these since it won't stick to a dry piece like green stuff or other epoxies will.

For a more advanced technique - With the pinched lump between your index and thumb, of both hands, you can roll both sides at the same time and pinch the bag into shape while you're doing it.

As you form the bags, you can place them in a row, forming a curve or straight line or whatever shape you want your emplacement to form. On the ends I flip one bag around to form a neat end.


Before long you have a neat stack of blobs, but they don't much look like sandbags yet.


So lets set about laying stitch marks with a hobby knife. To do this, simply poke the side of the bag in a series of stitch lines that follow the contour of the edge of the bag. To reinforce the illusion of a stitch, give the blade a slight downward twist to emphasize the fabric being pulled together. I also added some bullet holes and tears with a toothpick, to show it has seen some battle, and using the sharp hobby knife, I added some criss-crossed pattern to the tops of the bags to emphasize its rough fabric.


Before long, you've got yourself an emplacement of sandbags just waiting to be painted. For mine, I used a thinned tan paint, and some thinned black for the holes, that's it. I'm not the most gifted painter, but I thought they came out acceptable for the game table.

While you're playing with the clay, try your hand at pulling some details out of the clay. Metal cups, discarded guns, candles or pots and pans all add to the effect, and can easily be superglued onto the inside of the sandbags. For myself, I like them modular and so have made some straight sections and some corners that can go anywhere and on any terrain type.


And here's the final product... for now, I'm always making more stuff for my warmachine city that is still in its infancy.


If you make some of these, or expand on the idea, feel free to share below what you've done!
Cheers,
-Josh-