I have many sets of roads.
I tend to use any roads for any period.
Partially through laziness and partially because my roads are fairly general.
Standard width is 3 to 4 cm.
Roads systems I use.
1. Wandering dirt roads. These were made by Pete by cutting out rubber strips in a non straight line manner. They are 25mm wide. They work well for ancients, medieval and rough settings. This would include WW2 Russia.
2. Fat Frank straight black tarmac roads. These are also based on a rubber backing but all straight. 4cm width. Fine for SCW and WW2 Europe.
3. Adventure terrain clip together roads. These are resin pieces that clip together so that the road system does not get smattered all over the place during the game. Straight but wandering imprint ruts. Very good for CWB, ECW and SB.
4. Rubber/flexi by Scenic Effects. Much wider, 5cm? Really nice as they lay on the table well. I use them almost solely for Vietnam as they are wide and dusty.
5.Cloth strips. I have made some cloth strips out of Geek Villain mat off cuts.They are very straight but long enough to cover the distance in one piece. I roll them up to avoid bump creases. Fine for PBI games.
What are your favourite and most used road systems?
martin :)
I use Battlefront roads as you have dirt and cobbled roads, so fine for most 20th century games. I have a load of roads about 25-30mm wides, originally a set came fromQRF then I added bits to them, made from various materials, and shapes and lengths but generally a dirt track appearance so will do for most periods.
Also got some MDF roads at 3incs across, and made to fit 6 inc squares. Very 20th century, and urban.
Also got various road bits cut from speedboat decking cutoffs, a bit of rural onside and urban the other side. Only real problem is they are 7/8/9 mm thick so quite noticeable in 15mm scale.
Miles
I have some simple home-made strips of suitably-coloured matting for my straight Vietnam roads.
For everything else, I find Fat Frank's products both effective and reasonably priced.
In both cases, I use masking tape on the underside of the roads to join them up and prevent unseemly breaks in the roads on the tabletop (which can really spoil the look of the thing).
Another pet peeve is oversized roads. I agree that 3cm to 4cm widths should be sufficient for any (?) RFCM rule set. Less discerning gamers have been known to field much wider roads for their preferred rules, which don't look nearly so good.
Simon
The problem is with road width. If you put 2 vehicles together then the 3-4 inch width is correct ! But in a square that is 60 meters square ?
Which one do you go with ? Hence the roads either look right but too small or look wrong and too wide ?
The answer:
The best way is to go with what you're trying to create ? If in an urban situation they will be over side roads ?
More rural slightly narrow rough tracks ?
Miles
The roads are going to be wrong either way for the ground scale - it's just a matter of degree.
And conversely to houses, trees, fences etc. that we normally provide in "figure scale", roads just seem even more wrong if they are that wide!
I think most roads of the time might have struggled to accommodate two passing tanks, and I like Miles's rationalisation of what kind of road we're talking about.
Simon
It's the best way to define road width, in a town situation you get away with the roads being over scaled ? Factory game.
In a wide open game like desert the roads can be narrow especially if it has some partial bits next to it.
The buildings like you said are the same too.
The Monte Cassino table will be a great example when we do it for Colours. Town roads on one half the table, but then we have "Highway 6" the main road to Rome running through ?
The other half with the Abbey and Castle on it and the narrow winding roads on it ? Across the hills.
Miles
I use a variety of road systems gathered over the last 50 years: S&A Scenics, Geek Villain's narrowest dirt and cobbled roads, Irregular Miniatures (probably my earliest system), and a set produced by Old Glory before there was such a thing as Old Glory UK, which are flexible rubber and feature ruts and hoofprints to 15mm scale. They haven't carried these since the 90s, which is a shame.