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Hi Folks, This year my 12 MoH pledge includes a plodding along pledge again. Last year was too busy and frantic to consider any possible commitment in a long-term project. But 2026 is (so far) allowing projecting oneself in a (relative) stability. From there come the idea of an excavation site as a series of scenery elements. My Plodding along vow is structured around the MTO scenery ordered last Xmas: Tectonic Drill (oh yeah) and Mechanicum crane (Servohaulers). In order to set these elements in a more global context I have decided to expand my scenery for my Ashland table. Why? Well, first because I am a little bit fed up with City of Death style ruins and I want something a tad different. (While I claim I will do something different I try to forget about the fact that grey ruins and grey ashes are all grey…) Anyway, the Fragdrill will still be a piece of scenery able to jump the gap between the 2 settings. But my second objective has a more “game impacting” purpose: my Ashland is very flat and I want to give some altitude. The drill is a 3-story element, and for balancing it some extra structures such as hills or rock formation will be a good add-on. And I have all this pink Styfoam panels left from the fixing works in the new (rented) home…My third (cherryest on the cupcakest) excuse is to resume a politic of bitz box management too… So, what is the dream scope? - My excavation site will come with the 2 MTO boxed sets - Then I need a mine entrance on the side of a big rocky hill (Mesa type), eventually half buried under grey sands. I aim at a colour shift with some cream rocks in an ocean of ashes - Styfoam - A shanty town for the miners (now disappeared à la “Ghost of Mars”) – some cut Containers will be OK + lots of bitz - A power generator (plasticard and lots of bitz too) - A watch tower, or rather an illumination pole with a watch tower platform (based, here again, mainly on heavy bitz management) - Deposits for fuel, drums and crates - Extra rock formations and/or dunes – Styfoam again So far MTO is still somewhere in a pipe. I have therefore started working on some of the Styfoam elements, essentially for training purposes. Rocky structure and a fairy chimney were produced first. But this is not today’s topic as it has already been show previously. 12 MoH - Cliffhanger - Bouargh´s miniatures´ closet clean-up - The Bolter and Chainsword Today’s topic is starting to work on the dumps. First with Containers. The technique will then be applied to drums and crates later. The first element for the dump is there to break the perspective and offer and half story elevation. A container has been glued and then sawed in 2. Such a barbarity… the missing half is then suggested with polystyrene block just to fit the width x length x height and average silhouette. It is not that relevant all that part will be covered by a tarpaulin made out of medicinal gauze soaked with glue and plaster... The Modus Operandi and many recipes can be found on Youtube, as I do not own the paternity of the idea… The main hesitation came from questioning myself if it was better to set a base of Ashland or a concrete slab (similar to the Killzone Munitorum hub)… I went for the Ashland not because I wanted to fit to the theme and not because I am lazy, but because I am short of plasticard and I want to save it for the PowerGenerator… Therefore, this is not going to look like this The various stages of the assembly can be seen below: - Primed base and halved containers - Polystyrene silhouette glued latter (as spray can paint and solvent melt that stuff) - Slapshop inspired painting of the containers (see Plasma Generators post: A personal insight on Slap Chop applied to scenery - Bouargh´s miniatures´ closet clean-up - The Bolter and Chainsword) - Covering with soaked medicinal gauze - Final painting and small details on the base (spotlights and crates plus drums of various origins) Et Voilà! Of course there is a little miss (I am still on the learning curve I I have burnt some checking steps) : my filler was not exactly cut at the correct size for the back of the containers and I had to cheat a little bit to fill the gaps. I though the gauze would have added more thickness than it does truly. You can still see the difference in height but it used to be worse before parching. Unfortunatly I have soaked the gauze with such a lot of enthusiam that it is almost impossible to remove without breaking something. I'll live with that as I prefer this imperfection to resuming all the cutting and texturing. I am a long way from the goal for this plodding along but this is already my third scenery element for this project, so I would say that so far it is on good tracks. Next steps will probably be a series of parallel projects with the rest of the dumps and starting work on the mine entrance… which already starts growing up from Styfoam: See you later.