I expect we all use a lot of roads in our games.
I will keep this topic to 15mm roads, although do chip in with nay road related thoughts.
Here are some random thoughts on the roads I have used. Your roads?
1. Early on I made roads from card and painted them. Cheap, useful and very practical. I kept the width uniform/same/constant br dragging a pair of dividers across card. That gives curves of uniform width.
70% satisfaction.
2. Bellona vacuum formed streams painted as roads.
Consistent width. Nice banking that could be decorated with scrub and hedge.
Expensive for a big road system. Limited configurations due to available pieces.
50% satisfaction.
3. Painted roads. Painting roads direct onto cloth table. This is great and looks very realistic. It does however limit the games to that road pattern. Very affordable as cloth is quite cheap.
I have done about 6 PBI cloths like this but the newer editions don't allow wavy roads. I will complain to the writers. Also used on smaller cloths for demo games etc.
80% satisfaction
4.Adventure terrain roads. You may have seen these in the rules books or in PPHQ photos. A set of linking resin roads. Really good, except the height gives problems when travelling over templates or underneath them. When laid down they don't shift about as they are joined.
80% satisfaction
5. Franks road. Frank is an internet supplier based in some far island home. Very good value. Good widths. Textured onto sheet rubber. can be trimmed to suit. He does rivers too. Downside, is that they need to be cared for , as constant bending and storing can cause finish to flake off.
Ideal if you have a nice long scenery box or play mainly at home.
60% satisfaction. 90% if always used at home.
6. Faller model railway roads. I bought this railway road. It is cobbled and in light grey. I think it will suffer if constantly rolled and stored. In a similar problem to Frank's.
It is expensive but looks wonderful (i.e. the little individual cobbles). It really only makes straight roads but does make nice long strips.
90% satisfaction for games where it is historically accurate. e.g great for early war WW2 in Europe but rubbish in Malaya or ACW.
martin
