Polish Roads Revisited

Started by Wulf, 29 May 2016, 06:46:24 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Wulf

Anyone remember these?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wargaming-Scenery-DIRT-ROAD-Warhammer-Flames-of-War-15mm-Bolt-Action-Fow-ACW-WFB-/221881167559?hash=item33a925eec7:g:TcQAAOSwd0BV3jLw

I decided to give them a go, and bought some roads, some Dragon's Teeth and some ploughed fields. They took about 2 weeks to arrive, in a large padded envelope, safe despite a few taped up rips! Here are my opinions...

Firstly, I should have gone for the narrower roads. I thought they sounded too narrow, but these are a bit wide, for dirt roads, wide enough for two 10mm scale Tiger tanks to pass side by side if you want to risk scratching the paintwork. Which is odd, as there are tracks of wheels down the middle about the right width apart for 10mm trucks/carts...

The material is, as advertised, very soft & flexible. It's also almost universally dark chocolate brown, barring streaks & smears of milk chocolate on the roads, and the grey teeth of the dragons' teeth. All are riddled with little air bubbles... I'm not sure what kind of paint will stick to this material, but some weathering/variety would make them look better - they currently look like wet mud.

The roads look decent, but give the impression of wet, slick, mud. They're not as thick as they looked to me on eBay, only 3-4mm on average, which is about as good as they could be, I think. Fat Frank's roads have far better texturing, but aren't nearly as flexible, if you need that. The Dragons' Teeth aren't as sharply modelled or as regular as the resin ones sold by Pendraken, but the Pendraken ones are much bigger and, of course, in rigid strips. The ploughed fields... well, they give the impression of ploughed fields, but no-one ploughs a field in that pattern, or to that depth (in 10mm scale). Not bad though, for an impression, and, again, flexible (although a ploughed field over a hill would look odd...)..

All in all, they're a decent alternative, but less realistic looking than others. They are very flexible for use over hills & other features. I shied away from the rivers as the water looks far too uniformly bright blue. I'm not at all sure how well paint will stick to them, never mind PVA for flocking, etc, but some extra texture/colour would enhance them enormously. The air bubbles, while not so important in terrain, are annoying, and I doubt anything could be done about them. They're not too visible at gaming range, thanks to the dark colour,