Work continues with Amon Hen - I kinda promised to have the terrain & figures on display at the local hobby show in little less than three weeks, so much like with the Watcher's Pool terrain a year ago, I have again given myself a very hard deadline.
But on with the show - I've created molds for the Seeing Seat parts, as well as Helm's Deep columns. I'll use the latter mold later. Mixing the hardener with the RTV rubber was a bit messy.
I painted the rubber on the Seeing Seat parts first to ensure air bubble free molds.
Although the instructions said the working time with the mixed rubber was half an hour, I noted that the mixture was starting to get noticeably harder almost instantly. I had no choice but to pour the mixture on the Helm's Deep mold box and hope for the best.
Luckily, the molds turned out rather fine. Only one of the columns in the Helm's Deep mold had plenty of air bubble holes, and I can live with that.
The rubber instructions said to let the molds be for 3-4 days before casting, so I haven't added the cast parts to the Seeing Seat yet. Nevertheless, I've basecoated the Parth Galen and other bits black.
I've also started work on a 90x40 cm bit to represent the shoreline of Anduin. I've given this piece a priority over the other terrain parts... I remember how long it took for Woodland Scenics Realistic Water to harden, so I don't want to cast water only a couple of days before the model show.
Finally, I've added four dead evil (Evil Dead?) models just to dress up the display for the model show:
The 39 Uruks (including Uglúk and two Lurtzes) have received their share of tin bitz / chainmail drybrush and scorched brown. Next they'll receive dark flesh (although Uglúk should rather get something akin to very dark grey/purple - I'll experiment to find a suitable color).
I skipped painting dying Boromir late last year when I batch painted heroes, because I wanted to keep the option of modifying him into dying with a sword / axe wound instead of arrows. Now he comes back and bites me... but I still have plenty of days to paint him for the display, too - I just have to leave the arrows fairly loose. I'd also like to paint another Gimli (with elven cloak). Let's see if I have enough time, or if I have to either remove my other Gimli from the dwarven statue base, or, alternatively, hide the statue behind a bush. We wouldn't have any dwarven statues at Amon Hen, now would we?
More work with the shoreline to follow, as well as dry-fitting of all the individual pieces to anchor the overall board layout. More pics to follow rather rapidly throughout the next couple of weeks.
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But seriously, foam, foamboard and depron are rather durable, and with a coat of latex paint on top, they cannot be damaged by placing and moving minis on them. Only if you accidentally hit them with sharp objects - but then again, there's hardly any material that could withstand that without getting cracks and bumps. Foam terrain can certainly withstand acccidental dropping better than plaster casts, I assume. In any case, the damage is more likely to come from storage / transportation rather than gaming. So far my Balin's tomb has seen several battles, and it has withstood well. 
