Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Transportation Improvements

Here in the Soweiter League we have been working on improving the transportation networks. The first phase of this is a set of roads. These are all of the ones I have made so far, but I have more material for more pieces. I cut the pieces out of thin mdf board, which I find easy to work with if not the sturdiest material. Then I painted the roads with 3 shades of brown craft paint and the edges with 3 shades of green craft paint. At this stage I think they look pretty good and I'm thinking I won't flock them, at least for now.
So far I have made a number of straight pieces (some slightly wavy as you can see), a couple of corner curvess and a couple of T intersections. I plan to make at least a couple more corners and a 4-way crossroads. Does anyone else who uses road sections have other/additional shapes they find useful? I do plan to make a bridge or 2 soon, probably ones that can just be laid over my existing river sections and link up to the roads sections.

I like the painted look enough I'm considering scrapping my old river sections at some point and making new rivers just like the road pieces (or not :) ), along with a gaming table top. I'm also tempted to make some Grantian buildings along the lines of those seen in the Grand Duchy of Stollen or Lead Gardens (although it's not like I'm running short of ideas for projects!).

Be that as it may, any advice on useful road pieces is welcome. Thanks!

4 comments:

Bluebear Jeff said...

I don't like having roads always at right angles. I would suggest making a variety of 15` - 30`- 45` bends so that you can vary the straight sections . . . You can also make a few non-square intersections since roads don't always join at nice 90` angles.

As for the road sections themselves, they look very good.

Oh, one other idea that just occurs to me . . . you might make some "paths" (roads much less traveled . . . with grass growing up in the ruts, etc.


-- Jeff

old-tidders said...

Very nice looking road sections.

I'm lazy and make my roads from brown sandpaper. I cut the sandpaper sheets into ~3" wide strips. I keep them in position with a little loop of masking tape.

-- Allan

Martin said...

Check out the "Junior General" website. (You can find it listed under the Old School Wargaming Links.) They have examples of a lot of wargaming terrain features that can be enlarged (or shrunk) to any size that is needed.

Martin

Fitz-Badger said...

I agree about the angles, Jeff, but first I wanted to get enough basic pieces for a table. I don't want to make a ton of short pieces or pieces that won't be used much. "Paths" would have limited use for me as I wouldn't think they would have much effect on movement (I don't want to get too fine-tuned on terrain effects). On the other hand some roads less traveled could just look good and work the same as regular roads.

I prefer handmade terrain. I actually like making terrain and like getting creative and being able to customize it to my tastes and have it all work together. I also like the sturdiness of things like with and mdf board over paper terrain (yeah, I know there are things you can do to make paper terrain sturdier, but there's still the satisfaction I get from making stuff from scratch).

Thanks!

I still welcome any suggestions for other useful road pieces/shapes. I'll be looking through my scenario books at the maps and see what I can glean from those.