Looking for Modern Roads - Modular

[The Great Mahoo]

I have been building a city for some zombie-games, but I haven't been able to find any suitable road materials that jump out at me.  Anyone know of any rugged material that won't warp and can be used make the roads for my city?

For our WWII games at the local club, we use rubber strips of cobblestone (made for those Christmas villages) to make the streets, but I need some to look like asphalt.  A large sheet of it would be great, so I could cut curves from it, rather than simple 90-degree junctions.

And of course, the cheaper the better, but I want it to look good and most importantly, hold up from transport and storage.

Thanks!

[mattblackgod]

How about sheets of emery paper? They are the right colour and texture. All you have to is cut it to size and shape then paint on the road markings.

[Digitarii]

Zuzzy mats makes an urban mat that could easily be cut to shape and the road markings painted on.

[supervike]

If you can live with cardstock, WORLDWORKSGAMES has some great streets in their Urban settings.

You could just print off more as you needed them.

[Ulu Elsomalien]

Mine (from a set of autoadhesive floor panels ~8€ IIRC, cutted in two parts)



then black spray


then yellow marker



Easy, cheap and sturdy.

[basaint]

Ulu
whats laymens terms for autoadhesive floor panels?

[zizi666]

If you can live with cardstock, WORLDWORKSGAMES has some great streets in their Urban settings.

You could just print off more as you needed them.

as do scalescenes.com and they have both US and British road sets.

[Commander Vyper]

as do scalescenes.com and they have both US and British road sets.

As I told you

This might help, (also if you don't want to make fixed boards, then laminate the road sections and seal with a matt spray varnish to take the shine off.

The gaming area:

I wanted a gaming playing area that was reasonable compact, I wasn’t after a sprawling metropolis: I wanted a small, claustrophobic urban hell perfect for turf wars, swat takedowns and or course the impending zombie holocaust.

Anyway the table had to be:

1. Easy to store/flat pack away.
2. Modular: (ie able to swop the buildings and layouts around for maximum variation).
3. Robust: (As it would be travelling 260 miles to the south east for gaming on a reasonably regular basis).[/li][/list]


So then over to Homebase, (UK DIY centre and their wood department)I went for 7mm MDF, two boards 4 foot by 2 foot.

Once home I painted them with a dark grey poster paint ready to accept the road and pavement  layout. I thought that if I painted them first, any little edges where the roads weren’t flush would show up as brown mdf.

Then I moved onto the road layout…..

Again I wanted something that looked reasonable polished, without needing huge amounts of additional detail that could get damaged or damage the other board when stacked.

I looked at a number of options but eventually went with one of the downloadable pdf road and pavement sets from a railway scenics company called Scale scenes
http://www.scalescenes.com  and got the roads and pavements set (T034):



Concrete Ground (TX19)


Concrete Paths (TX33)


Tarmac (TX20)


Pavement (TX21)


Car park (TX22)


These were then downloaded and saved to disk for my visit to staples printers.

As they were created  in HO scale, I needed to scale them up so after a bit of playing around and some advice from a friend of mine I settled on between 135% & 144% enlargement, (I say that because I forgot the 135% when I went back a second time and ended up with straight  A4 to A3 upscale DOH!! All look ok together though).







So with the roads and pavements sourced my gaming area was starting to take shape:

Armed with printed sheets and gaming boards, I started to plan/sketch out the layout…but realised that without a decision on the buildings or the width of the pavements I was going to have some trouble in pulling it all together.

Pavements:

For the pavements I first looked at the new plasti-foam boards board that Jed over at Antenociti's Workshop http://www.barrule.com/workshop has started to carry, but didn’t go for it, (though don’t worry, loads of little bits and bobs from Jed found they’re way into the project!)

I decided that the pavements needed to be quite sturdy (as in keeping with the modular nature of the board, a number of them would need to be able to be swopped in and out) and I also needed to make some large open areas which again needed to be rigid and not warp.

So back to the DIY centre and over to the MDF again. I picked up two sheets of 3 mm 4 foot by 2 foot MDF, and got them to cut them down to strips for the pavements, and a number of  7”x7” & 14” x7” sections (you gotta love the first two cuts are free rule!!!) for building bases/open areas.

Being 3mm the MDF could be easily cut using a scalpel and metal ruler/set square to ensure good straight right angels.

The printed sections were then measured and cut with a scalpel. They were measured against the MDF the edges were prefolded before being glued and wrapped around the MDF strips. This gave a good clean curb edge.



Further curb stones were cut out and edging strips were added where necessary.

Repeat this process about 30 times and you have all the pavement sections you need. The trick is to be ultra sharp with your folding and clean with your adhesive. I used pritt-stick (giant stick) for the pavement and road sections, nice even application, no lumps and bumps.

Roads:

The road and tarmac sections were easy to cut and stick in place.

I was also able to add details such as bus stops, taxi ranks, give ways and stop sections quite easily:



More to follow.

The Commander

Although you do end up with a nice setup my way:



Goodluck

[Hat Guy]

I'm taking a "photo negative" look at roads for gaming. I'm making 1'x1' sections of pavement with a grid scored into them to simulate footpaths, painted gray and arranged on a black cloth to make city blocks and roads. If you really need lines on the roads, you can use chalk, but for most games, it looks fine.

[Ulu Elsomalien]

Ulu
whats laymens terms for autoadhesive floor panels?

I don't know english terms, I tried to translate word by word. This is the stuff you put on your floor, flexible and thin platic stuff with adhesive on the underside, the top side may look like stone, wood or whatever you can imagine. If you asked what I mean, I talked about that .

maybe "vinyl floor panels" is a best match?

[basaint]

AHHh now i get it, thank you.

[shadowking1957]

the world works ones  are the ebst i know for enviroment we had huge Zombie games using them. my main is brown felt for my FOW which work always ehhe

Tony

[Commander Vyper]

Too cartoony for me hence my plumping for the scael scenics ones, (and they do US roads as well as uk).

Each to his own...except of course black fabric with chalk on it 

The Commander

[warrenss2]

http://www.skankgame.com/Vinylmat.html

[Scout_II]

I generally build mine from scratch using MDF board.  Use a gentle touch and a wire brush to open up the surface some...and it will have an appearance that looks pretty close to concrete/asphalt depending on how you paint it.  Very cheap, durable and as long as you paint both sides it won't warp on you.

A lot of the model RR guys use a neoprene style foam.  You can spend a crap load and buy it from a scenics company, or you can check the phone directory for industrial suppliers who are close to you and buy it buy the roll (some that is self adhesive) or sheet.  It takes paint well enough, is easy to move and store and if you are attaching it to terrain it is flexible enough to conform to hills and stuff.  The cell structure of the foam is a good facsimile to the aggregate in modern roads.

http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/bus/bus7086.htm - The model RR stuff at model RR pricing.  I got a 100 foot roll of the stuff for the same price...granted it didn't have the center line.