Car Chase Game - road pieces - Updated 13/12 - Board Pieces finished

[Daeothar]

Having been fortunate enough to be able to attend Crisis last weekend, I bought the latest copy of 'Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy' there, as it was 'relevant to my interests'.  

As mentioned in the Pulp section, this episode is a bit of a special on Pulp gaming, just as I am running a pulpy RPG campaign with my group. Traditionally, we use the World of Darkness D10 system, as other GM's are running vampire and werewolf campaigns (we alternate between GMs and campaigns, to prevent burn-outs and boredom). This pulpy thing is new to most, but is taken to with gusto by all.

But I'm a miniature gamer all the way, and where others have taken to rolling it all out when there is fighting to be done, or using paper maps and tokens for each participant, I intend to go the full length and use proper miniatures and terrain, plus a dedicated miniature combat system. I've chosen .45, as it is also D10 based, which makes for easy conversion of stats, plus, that's what the geeks heroes of my group are familiar with.

I've already sourced and converted all PC's, plus some key NPCs and the bad guys. I've also got some spiffy period cars (roughly 1932, although I tend to bend the timelines here and there if it suits me), which will all be painted in the (very!) near future.

But, with the abovementioned magazine sporting a cool mini game to represent high speed car chases, I just knew I had to use that, if only to see if the miniature and scenery stuff is worth it with my group.

So I grabbed some pieces of thin MDF I had stashed for terrain purposes, and some high density styrofoam I saved form the bin when working my first job repairing computers. That must have been 10 years ago, but patience and a large storage area have finally brought them to their intended purpose...

Some time with an electrical saw, hot glue gun and sharp blade has yielded the following result so far:



As you can see, I have already deviated from the proposed rules in the article, and I have included bends. As my campaign takes place (at the moment) in rural England, I envisaged small, sunken country roads, curving through the countryside. As with the proposed rules, there will always be just 3 pieces on the table, the cars basically stationary, and the road pieces being added to the front and taken away form the rear, as the chase continues. So, I will always have enough straights and bends to keep up with the game.

I will create a simple table to roll against to see what piece will appear next, with sub-tables to see which way the bends will curve, and whether or not there will be traffic coming form the side roads. I might even use the T-junction as a split second left/right decision.

Also, I am contemplating making an extra piece with a narrow (one car wide) bridge, especially with oncoming traffic involved   .

Furthermore, I made the pieces A4-sized, so they will be easily stacked and stored in a standard A4 paper packaging box, of which there are plenty at work. Such a box will also fit pretty snuggly in my armybag, so no lugging around loose terrain:



Next up is adding filler to the foam and MDF, to seal and smoothen and adding duct tape to the edges for added protection. Then it's sand, gravel, road surface (which I haven't decided on yet; dirt road, concrete slabs, pavement, asphalt? What was the most commonly used road surface on English country roads in the Thirties anyway?), detailing and painting.

I will add seperate terrain features on loose bases, so they can be swapped around; trees, road signs, hedges (lots of hedges) etc etc.

Not bad for one evening's worth of work (at least for me...). Let's hope my buildingspree can keep up the same momentum the cars will have when hurtling down these roads...

[Brandlin]

Nice idea and execution.

English roads are almost predominantly Tarmac.

[fastolfrus]

For 1930s England, you need to watch a few "period" dramas, Poirot, Miss Marple, etc. or even Foyle (although that's 1940s)
Apart from a bridge, country lanes might also have a ford.
Could be a difficult one to model, but might be worth it.

http://www.itv.com/Drama/poirot/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple_(TV_series)

http://www.foyleswar.com/

[Belgian]

Looks great! Will eagerly follow the progress!

[Daeothar]

Put on the filler tonight and even though it's fast drying, I still managed to press down a finger into a thickly pasted area after several hours of drying time...  

No problem though; it'll be well covered with additional layers of prettification. Once it is thoroughly dry (which I had hoped was right about when I took these pictures...), I will sand the filler smooth and lay down some basing material such as sand and gravel. Probably tomorrow night then...

Here's all the pieces, laid out together in a way they'll never be in-game. But my Lego City days returned to me after 30 or so years and I just had to create a street plan.



And fastolfrus; where do you think I got the initial inspiration from? I watched the Ms. Marple series and also the older B&W films, which were not only great whodunnit-fun, but also a wealth of inspiration for a certain pulpy RPG campaign.

I'm thinking a bridge would be harder to model than a ford by the way. And after scouring the interwebs for pictures of thirties English country roads, I've got enough material to proceed, including a nice batch of pictures of period stype road/traffic signs. Brandlin; combining your suggestion with the photographic evidence, I will probably go with tarmac/asphalt here. Actually a relief to me, as that will be the easiest surface to model (I was really dreading paving stones...)

As an aside; here are the cars I sourced for the campaign, which I have named 'Interbellum' by the way. I would like to paint them, to match the scenery and figures later on, but then again; the chrome is such a prominent feature on most of them, it would almost be a shame to cover that under paint, even when it is pretty NMM. This would mean only some washes and picking out of details though. If you're looking for me, I'll probably still be on the fence...

[Marine0846]

I have the same problem with the cars also. Alot of chrome hate to lose it. Tried using a Micon pin to add detail. That did not work.
I may spray them with something like dulcote and try the pen again. Maybe will try a wash, see how that works out.
For some great looking cars this link is outstanding.http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=33823.0

[Steve F]

As an aside; here are the cars I sourced for the campaign, which I have named 'Interbellum' by the way. I would like to paint them, to match the scenery and figures later on, but then again; the chrome is such a prominent feature on most of them, it would almost be a shame to cover that under paint, even when it is pretty NMM. This would mean only some washes and picking out of details though. If you're looking for me, I'll probably still be on the fence...

You could try masking fluid (available from art shops).  It forms a thin rubber layer which protects the parts you don't want painted, and is then peeled off when you've finished.

[rob_the_robgoblin]

Grab some liquid latex, cheaper but the same stuff.

Looking good though!

[Burgundavia]

Great pieces. I would design a few side of the road pieces for interest, such as a billboard, or a tree. Also, they make great targets for pushing your fellow driver into

[Brandlin]

Great pieces. I would design a few side of the road pieces for interest, such as a billboard, or a tree. Also, they make great targets for pushing your fellow driver into

No billboards on English roads. Plenty of trees though.

[Daeothar]

No, this project was not abandoned, it just suffered from real-life interference. As happens...

Even though I won't make the deadline, which means I will have to find something to keep the party busy until I'm ready to let them roar off, in pursuit of PC-kidnapping nazi scum, the project is coming along nicely.

Anyhow; the progress so far:

First, a roadside wall. Made from MDF, into which the stones were scribed. I thern split some small squares of the MDF and used the resulting slivers to create some protruding stones by glueing them onto some of the stones. I also cut out some other stones, making recesses stones. This creates some depth in the stonework, and I'm pretty happy with the result, even though it relatively took a lot of time...



On to some of the modular scenery. These items, many which are to follow, will be placed along the roads, to create a bit more atmosphere. There will also be fences, trees, walls even maybe, etc, etc. I used small strips of MDF cut-offs for the bases, cut and filed into shape. Two of the long shapes will cover one bank of a road, and the smaller pieces are exactly half of a large one.

I used lichen for the bushes/hedges, but this is just the onderlying branchwork. This will be sprayed brown and inked, before they will be covered in leaves (read: dyed herbs) and sealed with multiple layers of varnish and a top layer of Dullcote. A WIP mailbox is also present.


Here, you can see the method I used to give the road surface some depth. Actual roads are always sloping towards the sides, to avoid water pooling on the surface, So to simulate this, I added some corrugated cardboard to the middle of the roads. I pressed down the sides first, to make the curves nice and gradual.


I then applied the actual road surface, which is a small grained sanding paper, edges folded in on the sides, glued to the boards.


And here you see another method I used to make the boards as durable as possible. They will be handled a lot during play, as sections are removed from the back and others are added to the front. So I applied ducttape to the sides, to protect the foam and filler, and also the sandingpaper and cardboard. It will most likely be sprayed black in the end. You can nicely see the bulging road surface in this picture.


A picture of the whole batch with basing sand and gravel added. The surface will now first be painted and then static grass and other stuff will be added.


But what is a pursuit game without pursuers? Here are the first two cars in an unforgiving WIP shot. The red one, which originally was red too, was layered at least 6 times, but still I did not get a smooth surface! Now, I know red is supposed to be a hard colour to paint, but I never had any problems with it before. We'll see how this pans out...

With the black car, I wised up and simply covered it in Dullcote. Now all I have to do is highlight it. I will probably revert to metalic paints as well, to make things easier for myself, as opposed th my original idea of NMM. It's nice, but will just be too time consuming.

The first batch of hedges has been based as well as you can see. There is also the first of several fences. That has been built entirely out of wood (balsa for the posts and walnut for the fence proper. Plastic superglued parts for the hinges and some copper wire twisted to look like rope for the 'lock'. I'm really happy with the result too. Some more will probably follow.

And there's that mailbox again. Do you think it's following us?

Anachronistic not-Shaun is there for scale purposes only of course...


And finally a beautyshot of some of the bits, just to get an impression of what the finished product will look like.

Onwards to glory!!

[Andym]

Cool! That's going to be good.

[Damas]

The cambered roads look really good! 

[Mason]

I am really liking this thread!

Watching with much interest...

[Belgian]

Interesting!