Road Works

A good network of roads is vital to many wargaming tables.  Not only does it allow you rapidly move around the board but it creates the narrative of the engagement with fields, houses and walls placed alongside them.

While this site has discussed many homemade ways of making roads and used several off-the-shelf examples (inc Battlefronts excellent pre-painted ones), I have decided to try a 3D print option using my new Neptune FDM printer.  This is a new area for me; While experienced with SLA (resin) printing I have never used FDM (plastic) printing before.  While FDM doesn’t offer anywhere near the detail of SLA (resin) printing it is great for scenery.  It is cheap, has a large build volume and the plastic pieces are hard wearing so can be thrown in boxes for easy transport.

I like to use Wargaming3D to find historical 3D print files and a quick search revealed a free set of rural roads that are also locked together.  You can find them here.

I decided to print 96″ of straight roads, some curves and a Y junction.  The filament for this comes to around £10.

Fresh off the printer

I wanted to use these roads to spruce up my snowboard therefore I decided to paint them as normal dirt roads and then add a snow effect and melted snow grass flock.

The roads were sprayed brown.
They were dry brushed with khaki and then a bit of khaki mixed with buff.
The stones were picked out with London grey and then a highlight with the same colour mixed with white.

I then applied the Mig snow effect and also some static grass.  


All set up on the table.

I think I perhaps went a bit too heavy with the grass on the roads, however, I think they work once they are on the mat.

Action shot.

For £10 you really can’t go wrong and in future, I will be printing a set for my normal rural summer board to replace my vinyl-backed set which has a habit of curling at the edges.