Terrain Upgrades and Improvements - Roads

I bought a copy of the Chain of Command (CoC) rules a while back and got round to setting up the first game for myself and a friend, we both enjoyed it and he agreed to trying out a campaign. As I already have some painted US and German troops from an initial foray into wargaming, with Bolt Action, I selected the 29 Let’s Go Pint sized campaign and purchased it a wee while ago. Both of us are rather new to wargaming and this was the first campaign game we ever played.

As we played I felt that my table really needed help. So I’ve decided I’ll be using this campaign as a driver to create more and better terrain. The more part isn’t too difficult as I’ve only been in this hobby for coming up 3 years so anything I make will tick the more box. I also want to try and create terrain as beautiful as that seen on the numerous blogs around this here tinterwebs, that are literally too many to name. As I lack much in the way of originality I tend to copy what the clever creative types have already done. I’ll try remember to point out who influenced what as I make it. First up is roads.

Roads
I want flexible roads as I intend to make some hills in the future for some height variation and then any roads would need to be flexible, so worth the time and effort to do it now. Looking online there are a number of suppliers of flexible latex-type roads but I fancy trying to make them myself.

Numerous online sources seem to revolve around the use of acrylic caulk and a base fabric or material, while a number also advocate the use of vinyl tiles. I tried making some from vinyl tiles, I got a few packets for £1 each from the local pound-store, cut into a variety of shapes, a bit of plaster/filler, glue and sand. They were passable but I didn’t like the lack of flexibility.

Next I tried making a latex road. I used one of the vinyl tile roads as a form to cast from. I made a mould from plaster of paris and then poured latex into it and left to dry. The plaster seemed to hold a good amount of the fine details and this was successfully imparted to the latex. The issue I have is needing to create a plaster moulds for each different type of road, and the length of time it takes for the latex to set. I would also have to buy in a good amount of liquid latex. I may try tackle this in the future but for now a quicker method is in order.

So I ended up on a third method. From various other projects around the home I have quite a bit of what I call linoleum left over: a dappled grey and a light brown one. It may be called vinyl or rubber but in any case it is soft and pliable unlike the vinyl adhesive tiles. I actually used it as a quick and simple road for the first game of CoC. It cuts to size and shape easily and I just had a long continuous stretch, more for speed than appearance.

From this picture you can see the roads I used for our first game, simply “made” from cutting out some leftover linoleum.

I really don’t like the look of it as-is. The colour is too light and there is no feeling of depth to it. However the flexibility made me think, I could use this as the base of my roads and add some texturing to the surface to improve the appearance.

The linoleum cuts so easily that creating the variety of shapes is a doddle. You can mark the underside in pencil and cut it out with a craft knife (I use a Stanley knife).

I've cut out a variety of road-type shapes that I think will be useful, all about 4in wide, some 3in for narrow tracks.

After that it is a case of liberal application of caulk. I used brown stuff as I figured if it chips or breaks then it won’t shine through white. There is no skill or ability in this bit, I used a caulk gun to squeeze liberal amounts onto the pieces and then used an off cut of the linoleum to smear it over the piece.

This in itself gave it some good texture I think, but I also ran various bits of scrap plastic over it to add some impressions of traffic.

On a few I dolloped a load of caulk up the middle and tried to manipulate it into a hump. Varying degrees of success and I will see how they turn out. I should be able to add this to other pieces without too much trouble if it ends up looking good.

Full disclosure, I used the dregs of a tube of caulk on four test pieces first and let them dry before cracking open a new tube and smashing out the rest. I've base coated all these test pieces black, the rest will get the same treatment once they have dried. With a bit of space it doesn’t actually take long to do the messy smearing. I managed about 24 pieces, maybe 14ft of roads, in an less than an hour (although spread over 3hr period as I was distracted by various other things, more on those in future perhaps).

The test pieces had actually curled up once dry which concerned me a little but a judicious bending the other way soon sorted them out. The linoleum really is a wonderfully forgiving material. I hope it takes the sand, PVA and flock so easily as well. If it does I may well be tempted to try create some flexible fields out of the stuff.

Hopefully you can make out the process from the pictures, there isn’t great light in the space I am working in, but I can be as messy as I like so there are some benefits, and plenty of room to spread out the pieces. Next step is to paint them up to a realistic brown dirt track colour, which may take a bit of tinkering to get it to look right.