Roads on your table...cheap!

[Rookieguy]

Use felt.
A hobby store or the crafts department of a dept store ought to have felt rectangles. Cut one along the long axis and presto, two road sections. Hobby Lobby sells them for 20 cents each. And I just discovered that my keyboard does not have a "cents" symbol.

Brown felt for a dirt road. Black means new asphalt, grey is old...not that asphalt is appropriate for the Iron Kingdoms. Hmmm...tarred cobblestones? As long as it's visually distinct and everyone knows it's a road, it's all good.

Cheap, quick, resilient, and not inclined to slide around the table. Damn, I'm good!

[thesavage]

Do you have a picture of this? It is a little hard to visualize it. How could a fuzzy road possibly look good?

[ricefrisbeetreats]

I use felt for all my terrain. Green for forests, blue for water, and so on. I'm not sure what roads really do for you game wise, but you can also buy large rolls of cobblestone or brick road from those victorian sets you see put out at christmas for next to nothing as well.

[fuzzypants]

a road would be a man made surface so you could not dig in on it or burrow.

[Rookieguy]

If the fuzzy bothers you, I guess you could coat the sections in white glue. Put them on waxed paper so you can peel them up when dry. Personally, I don't mind. I don't much care if it looks "right" as long as it's reconizable, but like I said, that's me....

[ballad]

Ummm,

If you don't care what it looks like, why bother using felt?

You could use cardboard or even draw it on.

[Jyggdrasil]

Fine grade gray sandpaper makes *brilliant* asphalt roads.

[CT GAMER]

a road would be a man made surface so you could not dig in on it or burrow.

A cobblestone road, etc. perhaps.

A dirt track or more rural way would not count as "man made" in my book.

So it depends on what you are trying to depict...

What i found is that typically you want one of two things when representing a road:

1. A crossroads (good focal point for a battle)

2. a stretch of road (from one side of a table to the opposite) for things like ambush scenarios, etc.

I simply made a "crossroads" table for when I feel like playing with such a feature:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v463/nurgle23/crossroads1.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v463/nurgle23/cygnardeployment1.jpg

Not "cheap" but less fiddly then laying out felt strips, etc. There are also some nice rubber road products that have the advantage of being heavy enough to contour tot a table and stay put nicely as they 'grab' the surface they are layed on well. I'd go this route if I wanted modular road sections as they are durable and have some detailing (wheel ruts and footprints ,etc.).

[whitekong]

The nice thing about felt is it is very cheap and super easy to work with. Plus spending lots of money for a road you are going to use once and a while doesen't seem like a good use of limited resources. If you have tons of money to spend on your table than great, but if not felt is a good alternative.

[Jyggdrasil]

I find that felts greatest strength is that its so cheap, and its greatest fault is that it looks like it ;)

[Wargame_junkie]

Fine grade gray sandpaper makes *brilliant* asphalt roads.


I wouldn't want to knock a figure over on that!

:p

[Jyggdrasil]

Me neither, which is why I give it a coat of plain white glue followed by a matte spray to dull the resulting shine.

Oh yeah, upstairs is for thinking! :)

[Aegis]

Another good (dirt) road material is a nice medium brown piece of ultrasuede. It's not that expensive, looks a bit classier than felt (has a nice velvety texture), and you can just buy it by the yard, and cut a long strip and roll it up when you're done. The rest can go under village buildings.

[Rookieguy]

To answer Ballad: I use felt because I use a fabric table cover (green bedsheet) and felt grabs it better. Also, felt can roll up for storage AND it can act as padding for other scenery. Twofer!

Responding to Aegis: I never even heard of ultrasuede before I read your post. I'm going to look into that. Thanks!

[Doppelbock]

Does anybody use special movement rules for roads? I know in the old hex-based games you could move faster on a road but I don't remember seeing anything like that for WM/H.

[Jyggdrasil]

There is nothing official. I have played the odd game where a model that spends its entire movement upon a road feature gains +2spd.

BTW - I have building some roads and will post the tutorial soon. I made 20 foot of roads for $15, and they look pretty good. Stay tuned...

[hooksy67]

There is nothing official. I have played the odd game where a model that spends its entire movement upon a road feature gains +2spd.

BTW - I have building some roads and will post the tutorial soon. I made 20 foot of roads for $15, and they look pretty good. Stay tuned...


please do this seems about right in my neighborhood of what my price range is and on the topend of how much road i would ever need

[Beastman]

There is nothing official. I have played the odd game where a model that spends its entire movement upon a road feature gains +2spd.

BTW - I have building some roads and will post the tutorial soon. I made 20 foot of roads for $15, and they look pretty good. Stay tuned...

I would love to see a tutorial for 20 ft of roads for $15! That sounds awesome!

[Bobby Hostile]

I keep looking for cobblestone wallpaper to make some cobblestone roads, but I can't ever seem to find any...

I r knot Spamurai.

[Lichemaster]

Build a road to play a few games on,

Next I will attempt more buildings to do a whole city, it's what I have always wanted to do a city fight.
You can see a few pink foam buildings started and also I assembled 5 fences to one day paint up for the city.


http://i719.photobucket.com/albums/ww200/Lichemaster_photos01/009-1.jpg


You can also see the blocks on the road, just cut up card stock (an old G.W box)

http://i719.photobucket.com/albums/ww200/Lichemaster_photos01/010-1.jpg


The road is one 4 foot long by 5 inch wide section and two 2 foot sections by 5 inches wide,

http://i719.photobucket.com/albums/ww200/Lichemaster_photos01/011-1.jpg


I damaged the wood when I was cutting it so I left this section unblocked so to speak and just glued down sand to make it look like some of the blocks where stolen,

http://i719.photobucket.com/albums/ww200/Lichemaster_photos01/012-1.jpg

[Rookieguy]

Does anybody use special movement rules for roads? I know in the old hex-based games you could move faster on a road but I don't remember seeing anything like that for WM/H.

Off the top of my head, I know of three ways to make a road affect movement.
1) Lay the road across what otherwise is difficult or impassible terrain, and make it clear the road is always open terrain. The best part of this is that it involves no house rules, only a specification of how the existing rules apply.
2) State a game-specific rule that the road increases movement or moving off-road decreases movment.
3) Run the road through a cultivated field, and damaging the crops counts against your chances of winning. Admittedly this one seems excessively complicated, so do as you see fit.

[Jyggdrasil]

I would love to see a tutorial for 20 ft of roads for $15! That sounds awesome!

Working on it. Time has been a bit scarce to write and take pics, but it will happen. Below are a couple pics I took which includes some of the road I built. I like to call it 'Surly we can work this out?'

One thing tho, I miscalculated the amount of roads. Its more like 17 feet instead of 20. I lost a bit of length making stuff like T junctions and corners.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v432/jyggdrasil/Terrain/TatsTable007.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v432/jyggdrasil/Terrain/TatsTable002.jpg

[TyrantSoul]

Working on it. Time has been a bit scarce to write and take pics, but it will happen. Below are a couple pics I took which includes some of the road I built. I like to call it 'Surly we can work this out?'

One thing tho, I miscalculated the amount of roads. Its more like 17 feet instead of 20. I lost a bit of length making stuff like T junctions and corners.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v432/jyggdrasil/Terrain/TatsTable007.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v432/jyggdrasil/Terrain/TatsTable002.jpg


What make are your buildings out of interest? They look familiar (and good), but can't put my finger on it.

[Jyggdrasil]

They are Conflix preparinted buildings. Not cheap, but they look good and wear well.

[TyrantSoul]

Ah ha, that was it. Knew i'd seen them...they look nice on the table I have to say!

[Lurch]

Wow, looks great!

[Reliant]

I'm a fan of cloth terrain. I use blue felt for water, and cut up some thick camo cloth for woods (although I have some green felt too). Tan felt for sand/mud/rough terrain. Black for roads (and sometimes tar). I think that it looks fine, and as long as you don't buy the really cheap stuff, and cut it with nice sharp scissors, then it's not fuzzy.

I like it because it looks decent and packs flat (and it's cheap, so if it gets lost at a tournament, it's not a big deal).

[Rookieguy]

Message to CT Gamer:

Where do you get these rubber road sections you mentioned? The owner of the game store I frequent has lamented the lack of modular roads, and he would much like to know your sources! :confused:

He's seriously considering buying a Gail Force 9 river ($90 +) and painting it. :eek:

On a more general note, thanks for all the input, everyone. LOTS of ideas across a wide range of involvement and price. :)

Sorry about the smileys. I'm in that mood....

[MadJack]

I've been thinking about cutting road segments out of sheets of cork, and then painting it to look like stone in the hopes that it would end up looking something like this:
http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-263952657-image.jpg

[Blockbuster]

aww roads .. a hardly used terrain .. but it makes a table so much more interesting.
i have used many diff things to make & pre-made roads.

Lichemaster has the best idea IMO for static roads. simple cheap and great looking

MadJack that is a good idea. if i may suggest washing them in a PVA (whiteglue) & water solution & glueing cardboard to the bottom .. otherwise the break down/chip rappidly with use & "storage".

Rookieguy i belive the afore mentioned modular roads are from Jr Minitures .. my LGS has some of them about enough for a 4X4 table ther're about 5$ a secton :O .. but you can get cobblestone, dirt/mud roads

[Aegis]

He's seriously considering buying a Gail Force 9 river ($90 +) and painting it. :eek:



Get the flames of war rivers, they're 1 foot pices (4 inches wide) and they come prepainted.


==Jyggdrasil, are those cork?

[Rookieguy]

Buy vinyl floor tiles. I understand they work out to 50 cents per tile. Cut them into halves or thirds. Paint them with textured spray paint. The owner of my LGS loves this stuff! Aged Iron looks like asphalt, Brown looks like a dirt road. Some types have big flecks, and I think they'd pass as cobbles.

Of course, as I've mentioned before, I'm not terribly concerned with appearance. As long as it looks like what it's supposed to be, I don't need it to achieve museum-display quality. Textured spray paint does this, it's quick, and it's not terribly expensive.

I get mine at Wal-Mart.