The Quest for Dirt (Roads), the finale.

Back in November 2014 I blogged about the need for dirt roads for my table. >> The Quest for Dirt (Roads). 2 years in, still no roads. I had drawn up a shortlist of stuff I need for my table a while back. Trees/woods, dirt roads, a river, swamps, fences. All of these I have kit for or know how to make already. Except dirt roads.

Well, screw it, I thought. I've got money in my Paypal, and buying scenery is a wise investment for me. So out comes the Google search, a quick peek at Ebay for prices and then the more difficult task of browsing for local shops.I'm still not enamoured by latex roads, depending where you go they can be a decent price, or really expensive. Not doing wood or cork. I basically asked myself, what would make more sense, spend a whole weekend or more (being a perfectionist sucks sometimes) building roads, so 8-10 hours of building and painting, or find something that I've seen in battle reports and I like the look of and is available. On Ebay, you can buy caulked, latex or resin roads. And there is actually not a whole lot of difference in cost? 15 Pounds per metre of road is about it. I calculated I will need roughly 4 metres in 30cm pieces to make a varied road on a 4x4 table. Some crossings would be nice too.

In the end I narrowed it down to the Battlefront Rural Road set (BB117) and Expansion kit (BB144). 2 boxes of the first and 1 box of the latter should suffice. Why this set? Well, Piers uses it and it looks really nice in his battlereports. It's prepainted, durable, and as it turned out, I can get it locally.

Going off Ebay UK Prices, 3 boxes of the stuff from 2 different suppliers (no seller sells both boxes) would have set me back 110-115 euros including shipping. Locally, I only found 2 (online)shops that sold both boxes, both with free shipping over 50 euros. One for 108, the other for 105 euros. I had never heard of the first shop but I knew the second. But that shop had burned me in the past with stuff in backorder for months on end, so a quick email was sent to ask if they had stock, and if not, how long would I have to wait? 5 minutes later I had my answer, 1 was in the stock, the others could be delivered in a week. Then a friend reminded me that he gave 10% discount to members of the Dutch FoW forum if they used the code he had listed there. And I actually have a, be it ancient, account there. Well, that was sorted then, order made, code entered and for 94,50 I'm the happy owner for enough roads for my table. It's quite a bit of money but I feel it's a solid investment.

With that out of the way, the next things to tackle are:

1. Forest - rebasing, this year if possible.
2. River and swamps - start collecting scrap hardboard for that, this and next year.
3. Fences and gardens - next year.

 ...and get some games in of course :)