Roads

Been awhile since my last post, and I bet you are wondering, with all of the different ways you can go about designating and marking a road, what is a good way to make one? If you were observant, you already saw a sneak peek at one of my roads in the "Fields" entry. It is simple, but maybe slightly expensive.

At Orchard Supply Hardware (or most hardware stores), you can find this special grip tape that is applied to the edge of each step in a stairway. I don't have a picture, but imagine a roll of the stuff. Anyway, just ask to get a couple feet it, and along with it you will need the following things:

• Some bass wood
• A hobby knife
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Paint
• PVA White Glue
• Static Grass

What I did was to get 6 feet worth of the material and cut it into 6 foot-long pieces. These were then sprayed black, as mine were gray. After the primer dries, you can trim the pieces to the exact shape you want. I believe mine was just wide enough to fit a FoW large base. After trimming it, get your bass wood and cut it to the exact same dimensions of the material you trimmed. Then comes the tricky part: peeling the backing off the material to stick to the bass wood. I recommend having the material facing down on the table (with the sticky part facing up) and positioning the wood over it to get an accurate join.

Now that you have your road piece together, simply drybrush an earthy color (edges too), and after the paint drys, water down the PVA glue to apply the static grass over the areas you put the glue.

From here you can make any variety of road pieces you want, be it shorter straight pieces, curves, angles, intersections, etc. The only reason why I say to have six foot-long pieces is that your road will stretch across a Citadel battlemat, which is virtually a staple amongst wargamers.

Here's some pictures of making the road:




Material before being sprayed...




...and after

   

Joined pieces, one completed, and one ready to paint

 

Same pieces, with other peice painted.

  

4 separate pieces demonstrating the 4 steps.


Next time I will show how I make my forests.